I Admit I Cut a Few Classes

This course might have been better off with 30 or even 24 lectures instead of these 36 too-often painfully repetitious segments. Although the course outline looks like it would be inclusive and stimulating, in fact many of the lectures sound the same. I quit listening to several of them when what I thought was going to be a new and interesting topic became a reiteration of previous material.

Not that there aren’t some enlightening and interesting lectures on a couple of unexpected topics such as "Latino Detectives on the Border" and "The American Dime Novel," but for the most part Professor Schmid keeps returning to a few favorite themes.

The first and most repeated theme is the foundational (the professor is fond of such adjectives) roots of mystery and suspense fiction, which he attributes to Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie. It would be pretty hard to argue with these choices, but their work (especially Poe’s "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") is referred to so often, and usually using similar words to make the same points over and over, that I began to wonder whether we’d make it into the 21st century. We do in fact get there, and in the process spend a lot of time with The Private Eye, another pet topic--again a fair choice that I thought it was overemphasized.

This is definitely a college “lit” course, of a type that emphasizes subjective analysis ("why does Dashiell Hammett tell us that Sam Spade's eyes 'burned yellowly'?") and literary criticism ("The noted critic xxx zzz has proposed that...."). It’s also a very academic presentation, heavy on the "here’s what I’m about to tell you, I’m telling you this, here’s what I just told you" formula. For what it presents, it is authoritative, and I did learn some interesting things, but it did not inspire me to explore the work of any of the new-to-me authors, or to try my own hand at mystery and suspense writing (at which I admit I would be awful, so that last is probably just as well).

54 people found this helpful

As someone else said, “mis-titled”

This course is enjoyable enough for what it is. The problem is, the title implies something different than what the course actually is.

This course isn’t an analytical look at the nuts and bolts of what makes good mystery and suspense fiction work, but often more a history lesson (and not an unenjoyable one) of the genre. There’s some surface-level attention to broad themes and the arc such stories have taken historically, but don’t expect a detailed look at what makes the stories themselves successful from a writing perspective, or enjoyable from a reading perspective.

Of course, I should have done a bit more homework before downloading the course. As long as you know what you’re getting beforehand, it IS a high quality course.

51 people found this helpful

Eye Opening and Enjoyable

Would you listen to The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction again? Why?
I would so listen to this again. It was interesting and informative and I liked the narrator's personal views on certain subject matters. This lecture has turned me on to new reading possibilities that I would never have known about if not for this lecture. It made my work day more enjoyable as I listened while at the office.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction?
When Professor Schmid spoke of the Native American mysteries it perked up my ears. It sounded fascinating and now I'm interested in reading some of the books that were mentioned. I also liked when he talked about the Cozy Mysteries and how professor Schmid didn't find them low brow as some critics have stated. I like thrillers and suspense but a cozy mystery is very comforting to read and immensely enjoyable. Critics be damned but I am with Professor Schmid when it comes to the Cozy Mysteries.

Which character – as performed by Professor David Schmid – was your favorite?
There were no characters as this was a lecture and not a book. I liked the Professor's style of lecture. It wasn't wooden or pretentious. There was warmth and insight and knowledge and passion in what he had to say.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
This was not a book but a lecture and so it mainly fascinated me.

Any additional comments?
I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture by Professor David Schmid and will be interested to listen to other lectures by him as I enjoyed the sound of his voice, the cadence in which he spoke, and his passion for the subject.

23 people found this helpful

Mixed feelings

The professor has a large fund of information available to him, and, as a result, I have been introduced to intriguing authors and works. However, he tends to draw unsupported inferences regarding features and developments of various subgenres, so many that I lost count. And I wonder if he is as familiar with seminal works as he should be. For instance, in one lecture, he posed the question, Why did Agatha Christie only write about murders? The answer is, professor, she didn't.

Finally, he redefines cozy to include Golden Age and implies that the modern cozy subgenre is a devolution of mystery writing. Golden Age and cozies are two distinct genres, distanced by time and geography. Golden Age is what the rest of us call traditional mystery and is the trunk of the mystery family tree. As for cozies: they may not be literature, sir, but the fact that, it has an audience shows that it serves a purpose.

On the plus side, he has a very nice voice.

21 people found this helpful

Disappointed, But Maybe My Fault

When I downloaded this Great Course, I thought it would be about WRITING mystery and suspense. It isn't. It's sort of an overview of the literature, from "Murders in the Rue Morgue" to "The Da Vinci Code.' If you are already a devoted reader of mysteries and suspense, there will be little fresh material here, though I did get some leads on mystery authors I haven't yet read. If you want to discover new authors, keep a pad and pen with you--I have forgotten most of the authors and book titles already.

On the plus side, the lecturer knows his material backward and forward, and is a true devotee of the genre. He talks about Sherlock Holmes as though he knew him personally, and his depth of knowledge about these writers and their work is phenomenal. It just didn't happen to be what I wanted, which is not the fault of the course.

18 people found this helpful

Mis-titled

What made the experience of listening to The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction the most enjoyable?

Interesting enough material, but it wasn't instructive for someone wanting to learn how to write about the subject matter.
It was an entertaining overview of how Mystery and Suspense is and has been written. A great selection of authors analyzed, but it didn't actually concern itself with the listener writing. It was a reader's study.

Would you be willing to try another book from The Great Courses? Why or why not?

I take them on occasionally. Generally I find them instructive, often entertaining.

What does Professor David Schmid bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This question is irrelevant to the nature of the title being reviewed, since it was an academic study, not an actual story.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

This question is irrelevant to the nature of the title being reviewed, since it was an academic study, not an actual story.

Any additional comments?

Re title the series: How Mystery and Suspense Is Written. It lack the necessary instruction about beats and high points, timing and other details of story construction. Thirty-six half hours later I found myself still wondering how to do this. The various "lessons" I've found for writing "genre Romance" have been much more helpful to that end. Was hoping for something like here.

11 people found this helpful

not what I expected but enjoyable

I wouldn't say it's the secrets of mystery and suspense. this is more a history and complete treatise on the elements of the genre.

8 people found this helpful

Identity Writing/Reading

Perhaps it was a means of padding the course, but the lectures that fixate on the race and gender of the writers and works were of far too much focus for me. I don't need to hear about the first [insert aspect of identity] writer. Nor do I need a seemingly forced review of every culture and race's offering. Clearly, some of the contributions didn't meet a conventional standard, and thus shouldn't have been touched upon. Alas...

7 people found this helpful

Some things to know before buying this

Professor Schmid mentions and discusses many different works over the course of the 36 lectures, but he keeps coming back, over and over, to Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. I suspect this is partly because he's interested in showing how the key elements of the genre can be traced back to those early works, and how later authors were influenced by or differ from them; and that it's partly because he's used to teaching an actual, semester-long class with a limited reading list of works he expects his students to read and discuss during the semester.

Are there spoilers of the works he discusses? Some, but not a lot. If you've never read Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" or Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," this will spoil them for you.

In some of the lecture series released by The Great Courses and others, including this one, the lectures sound like articles that the presenter has written down ahead of time and is reading to you verbatim, Other series sound more like the lecturer is talking to you directly. I prefer lectures to be this latter kind, but "The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction" is one of the former.

The performance isn't bad. Professor Schmid's voice is clear and easy to listen to, but he has a very choppy narration style.

The main focus, in case it needs to be said, is on written works (novels, short stories, and a bit on true crime narratives). Works from other media (movies, TV, radio) do get mentioned, but mostly for how they relate to the written works.

Professor Schmid is to be commended for the breadth of his coverage. He knows his field. Some people will find these 36 lectures to be overkill, and some will wish he had included some works or topics that he left out. I admit, there were times when I thought to myself, "Do we really need a whole lecture on this?" but mostly I was glad he was so thorough.

5 people found this helpful

Very interesting and entertaining!

Quite knowledgeable about the subject. I would like to introduce him to the pronunciation of the letter "g" at the end of the suffix "ing". To an American ear, it occasionally becomes confusing, as much as I generally appreciate a British accent. I was pleased to discover that I often anticipated the next topic of discussion from a general description. Two things I would have liked to be included: an unraveling of the plot of The Big Sleep, if one can be found, and something about the very popular books of J.D. Robb, which are a blend of police procedural, romance, and science fiction.

5 people found this helpful