Fair-Play Detective dan S S Van Dine

By Ftrohx


Sebelum anda membaca artikel di bawah ini.

Saya ingin bicara jujur bahwa saya bukan penggemar S S Van Dine. Tapi meski begitu 20 aturan Van Dine memang layak dicermati untuk menambah pengetahuan anda dalam dunia fiksi detektif.

Di bawah ini adalah 20 aturannya bersama dengan komentar saya.


1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

Ok, saya setuju untuk bagian yang ini. Equal Oppurtunity, kesempatan yang sama bagi detektif di novel dan pembaca untuk mengungkap siapa pelaku pembunuhan. Iya, memang begitulah seharusnya sebuah novel detektif, si pelaku menebar bukti di mana-mana sekaligus mengarahkan kecurigaan ke tempat yang lain.


2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

Di sini saya kurang setuju, faktanya kebanyakan penulis detektif selalu menyiapkan kejutan di akhir cerita. Sesuatu yang belum pernah ada di bab-bab sebelumnya. Jadi menurut saya sah-sah aja memberi kejutan baru di akhir cerita, karena pembaca juga suka dengan hal-hal baru yang tidak pernah dia ketahui sebelumnya. Tapi dengan catatan, tidak boleh berlebihan. 


3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

Aaaaaaaaa… Ini dia, haduh Pak gimana mau jual buku atau film kalau nggak ada kisah cintanya. Aduh Tuan Van Dine anda terlalu serius dengan aturan ini.


4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

Aturan no. 4 langsung mengingatkan saya dengan film Hollywood Now You See Me, saya setuju bahwa sangat-sangat curang ketika di akhir cerita si detektif yang selama ini menyelidiki sebuah kejahatan ternyata adalah penjahatnya. Ok, saya setuju dengan anda untuk yang satu ini, sangat buruk.


5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

Masuk ke no. 5 saya jadi ingat dengan karya-karyanya Sidney Sheldon. Nothing Last Forever, Memories of Midnight, Are You Afraid of The Dark, dll. Sheldon mengaku bahwa karya-karyanya menggunakan metode Deus ex Machine dimana konklusi dari cerita dibuat muncul dengan sendiriannya tanpa bantuan dari si Protagonis, layaknya sebuah kecelakaan yang terjadi begitu saja. Dan faktanya kebanyakan novel Sheldon berakhir dengan si antagonis tewas oleh kecelakaan yang terjadi begitu saja tanpa ada rentetan kejadian menuju ke sana. Sangat disayangkan memang, seolah si penulis terlihat tidak cukup pintar untuk membuat konklusi. Ok, untuk bagian yang ini saya setuju dengan anda.


6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

Yang ini intinya adalah “Selesaikan apa yang sudah kamu mulai!” Cerita nggak boleh berakhir gantung dan si detektif tentu saja harus menuntaskan kasusnya.


7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

No. 7 ini, saya nggak tahu nyindir siapa, tapi saya jadi teringat sama novel The Girl With Dragon Tatoo. Masalahnya, mayat korban tidak ditemukan hingga kemudian cerita bergulir bahwa ke belakang bahwa memang tidak ada mayat pembunuhan. Bahwa korbannya ternyata masih hidup. Mungkin benar kekesalan Van Dine dengan sebuah novel sepanjang 300 halaman dan korban yang selama ini sudah payah dicari, sialnya masih hidup.

Beuh, luar biasa ngeselin.


8. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

Ok, dia nggak suka bagian ini, pastinya dia nggak suka Death Note ataupun Detective Yakumo apalagi Bleach. Sayang sekali Tuan Dine.


9. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn't know who his codeductor is. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

Gw benci yang satu ini, bahkan seorang Tsugaeda pun menceramahi gw tentang masalah ini. Nggak boleh ada dua atau lebih detektif di dalam satu novel. Huh, sayang sekali Tuan Dine anda terlalu kaku. Asli, saya tidak setuju dengan anda. Faktanya Agatha Christie, Anna Kathrine Green, dan Gaston leroux membuat satu novel dimana terdapat lebih dari satu detektif dan mereka berhasil. Mereka jadi legenda karena itu.


10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story — that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

Bagian yang ini cukup jelas.


11. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion.

Ini juga cukup jelas.


12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

Hm, bagian ini mengingatkan saya dengan Prof. James Moriarty di Final Problem. Banyak minor helper dan co-plotter tapi penjahat utamanya memang harus satu penjahat.


13. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds.

Bagian ini mengingatkan saya dengan Women in White karya Wilkie Collins dan Study in Scarlet karya Arthur C. Doyle.


14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.

Benar-benar keras dan tanpa ada toleransi, ckckck…


15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent — provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face-that all the clues really pointed to the culprit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying.

Bagian ini sangat jelas.


16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

Nah ini nih, cerita detektif harus bersih dari isu-isu lain-lain di luar kasus pembunuhan. Membaca ini, saya langsung ingat dengan novel Cuckoo’s Calling dari Robert Galbraith dan turunannya. Tentu novel sepanjang 500halaman lebih itu gak hanya cerita tentang mayat dan bagaimana menemukan pelaku pembunuhan. Jelas, kalau cuma ngejar kasus gimana mau sampai 500halaman, 50 halaman saja mungkin sudah selesai itu. Aturan no. 16 ini menurut saya sangat sangat sangat sangat membatasi seorang penulis untuk membuat novel detektif. Gimana lo bikin cerita detektif kalau elo nggak nambahin nilai plus di cerita detektif lo? Dan permasalahannya lagi sudah ada ribuan novel detektif di luar sana. Apa yang bisa lo tambahin lagi selain informasi di luar teknik prosedural?


17. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by housebreakers and bandits are the province of the police departments — not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities.

Ok yang ini saya setuju.


18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

Nah bagian ini langsung jelas menyindir Gaston leroux. Ok, semua orang tahu bahwa Leroux adalah salah satu legenda dari dunia detektif fiksi dengan masterpiece-nya Yellow Room. Bahkan seorang Dickson Carr bilang bahwa Yellow Room adalah novel detektif terhebat sepanjang masa. Di sini masalah, seandainya Van Dine adalah editor di tempatnya Leroux mungkin kita warga planet Bumi nggak akan pernah menikmati novel Yellow Room.


19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader's everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.

Bagian yang ini langsung membawa saya ke cerpen Second Stain dari Sherlock Holmes. Apa salahnya sih Pak, bawa kasus International ke dalam sebuah kisah pembunuhan di ruang tertutup. Anda tuh terlalu serius, terlalu membatasi diri dengan ego anda yang begitu bulat dan besar.


20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author's ineptitude and lack of originality.

(a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect.

(b) The bogus spiritualistic se'ance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away.

(c) Forged fingerprints.

(d) The dummy-figure alibi.

(e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar.

(f) The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person.

(g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops.

(h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in.

(i) The word association test for guilt.

(j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.


Aturan terakhir ini begitu detail.

Dari sini kita tahu sebenarnya dia menyindir siapa saja, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, John Dickson Carr, Gaston Leroux, Golden Age ataupun Klasik.

Dia ingin mengubah semua itu.

Mungkin karena di masanya, novel detektif itu membludak tanpa aturan.

Semua penerbit berlomba-lomba nerbitin novel detektif kayak di Indonesia semua penerbit berlomba-lomba nerbitin novel romance dengan setting di luar negeri. Iya, mungkin dia gusar dan membuat sebuah aturan yang bisa menseleksi begitu banyak novel detektif yang beredar pada saat itu.

Pertanyaan apakah aturan-aturan di atas masih relevan dengan industri novel detektif dan thriller sekarang?

Hmm, beberapa saya setuju. Tapi yang lain, rasanya tidak untuk saya.

.  .  .