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Mystery fiction with skeptics?
I asked a question at the end of my phone post yesterday, but as I'd started the phone post with warnings about spoilers for the book I was reviewing, I figure maybe the resounding lack of any sort of response whatsoever might have something to do with people getting scared off. (And, actually, it turns out the spoilers weren't so spoilery. :D)
So here's a cut-and-paste of the question from the transcripts:
So here's a cut-and-paste of the question from the transcripts:
Leading on from that, on my drive home which I'm still on, hence the phone post instead of a text post or anything like that, I was listening to my skeptic podcasts and I'm wondering if there are any detective novels starring skeptics. Not skeptics like the proper sketicas all detectives ought to be, but like in the modern skeptical movement. You see a little bit of it in the TV show "The Mentalist". House is a bit of a skeptic, that kind of thing. If anyone knows, let me know. Thanks.”
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Unfortunately I don't know of any detective fiction with modern skeptics, but that proves nothing since I am not well-read in the field (pretty much just Block).
I can think of a few stories wherein a detective expresses skepticism about and demonstrates the falsity of claimed woo-woo, but they are all Father Brown stories. Father Brown, being a Roman Catholic priest of 90 years ago, is not exactly what you are looking for. On the other hand, he does generally have the proper attitude. If you haven't read these and are interested I can look up specific story titles.
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It occurs to me that Asimov touches on this sort of thing occasionally in the Black Widowers stories, although fewer than one might expect. I can only think of three offhand, in fact (there is a fourth in which the guest is modeled on James Randi, but the mystery is not related to his work). I can't recall his Union Club stories well enough to remember if there were any like that (they're pretty minor anyway).
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I read the Black Widowers stories a long time ago, and maybe the Union Club. Don't recall any of them: perhaps time to look them up again. XD
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In the Union Club stories, the narrator and a few other guys (one of them named Griswold) are sitting around in the eponymous club when one of them says something that causes Griswold to insult him and then recount a mystery which he solved and proves whatever the speaker said to be wrong.
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These are the most pertinent, as they involve people who actually claim to have psychic powers or whatnot (the first story on the list is about a guy running a cult who claims that looking at the sun can cure eye problems):
These involve events which some people in the stories are inclined to attribute to supernatural powers of some kind (or just unfounded ones - in "Oracle" the fact a dog growls at someone suggests to some people that he is guilty):
Finally, this doesn't have anything to do with what you asked, but as you are a Bujold fan you should read it:
The stories in bold are in the first Father Brown book, The Innocence of Father Brown, which has an edition annotated by Martin Gardner - I highly recommend that if you can put your hands on a copy. Sadly he has never done the other books.
Since these were all written by a white Englishman from around 1910-35 you will be unsurprised to learn that they have a significant amount of racism, hateful remarks about Eastern religions, anti-Semitism, etc. On the bright side, they are not especially sexist. The racism is much more present in some stories than in others - I haven't mentioned the worst ones, but "The Red Moon of Meru," "The Dagger With Wings," and "The Song of the Flying Fish" all have objectionable bits (and I won't make promises about all the others, since it's been a while since I read some of them).
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