A Word About the HIBK Style

    I mentioned the HIBK style of writing in the post about Margery Allingham's mystery novel, Black Plumes, which has at least a touch of that style, so I felt I should enlarge on it a bit.

    The style of mystery writing that came to be known as the HIBK was somewhat popular in the early part of the Twentieth Century, but fell out of fashion as more and more readers found its persistent foreshadowing of events that had yet to take place too annoying to tolerate.  Mary Roberts Rinehart is probably the best known practitioner of this style of writing.  I read her mystery novel The Circular Staircase many years ago, but don't have a copy of it.  

The HIBK style is best illustrated by the satire of it in Ogden Nash's poem, "Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You."  

"The H.I.B.K. being a device to which too many detective-story writers are prone;

Namely, the "Had I But Known".

Sometimes it is the Had I But Known what grim secret lurked behind that smiling exterior, I would never have set foot within the door;

Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now, I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor.

Had I But known narrators are the ones who hear a stealthy creak at midnight in the tower where the body lies and, instead of locking their door or arousing the drowsy policeman posted outside their room, sneak off by themselves to the tower and suddenly they hear a breath exhaled behind them,

And they have no time to scream, they know nothing else til the men from the D.A.'s office come in next morning and find them.

Had I but Known-ers are quick to assume the prerogatives of the Deity,

For they will suppress evidence that doesn't suit their theories with appalling spontaneity."

From The Art of the Mystery Story, Howard Haycraft, editor.  Grossett & Dunlap, 1946.

    Mind you, the HIBK device can also be extremely funny if properly employed.  Mary Roberts Rinehart's Tish books chronicling the adventures of that intrepid trio of middle aged spinsters, Miss Letitia "Tish" Carberry and her friends Lizzy and Aggie, use the device to hilarious effect.  I might have to take time to re-read those books, too, even though they're not mystery novels.  

    Fortunately, this style of writing quickly fell out of fashion, although traces of it do still crop up from time to time.