Degrees of Murder

Most detective stories are located in one city, the Maigret series in Paris, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlow in Los Angeles. These stories, like the television series based on Colin Dexter’s Morse novels, are set in Oxford. Unlike Raymond Chandler’s and Colin Dexter’s novels these are suspense stories of the Hitchcock variety. The fundamental difference is that a thriller is seen from the point of view of the police, or in Chandler’s case the private dick. A suspense story is seen from the point of view of the suspect. The whole perspective alters. In a suspense story there is no temptation for the reader to skip to the last page to find out who did it.