TOPIC 60: AMERICAN DETECTIVE FICTION: D. HAMMETT AND R.

CHANDLER. ENGLISH DETECTIVE NOVEL: P. D. JAMES.

INTRODUCTION

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction in which the detective either

professional or amateur, investigate a crime, usually a murder. Detective fiction
flourished in the early 20th century, although it is more often considered to have
begun in 1841 with the publication of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, by
Edgar Allan Poe who is known as “the Father of Detective Fiction”. Poe was
also a literary critic and he created a rationale for the detective story. The unity
of effect of impression is a point of the greatest importance.

The Detective Novel has always been related to public interest in the problems
of modern, urban life, particularly in crime. But crime as a feature of Western
social life was not generally recognized until the rise of large cities in the early
1800s, a period that corresponds to the creation of a mass reading public. City-
dwellers, fascinated by and afraid of crime, vilified and romanticized criminals,
as well as those who fought them.

1.- DETECTIVE FICTION: BEGINNINGS

The idea of detection and the figure of the detective that would eventually stand
at the centre of the genre were introduced in the early 19tn century by a
Frenchman, François-Eugene Vidocq. Having served as a soldier, privateer,
smuggler, inmate and secret police spy, Vidocq at age 24 credited himself with a
duel for every year of his life. He established his own department, The Surete,
which became the French equivalent of the American F.B.I. When Vidocq’s
Memoirs were published in France in 1828, they were immediately popular and
translated into English.

Interest in England in “crime stories” blended with a strong, existing genre

called the Gothic Novel. Most scholars attribute this genre to Horace Walpole,
whose “Castle of Otranto”, published in 1765, established the horror story, to
which Mary Shelley added scientific aspects with Frankenstein.
In the United States, Edgar Allan Poe read Dickens, and he read and reread
Vidocq. In five stories between 1840 and 1845, Poe laid out the basics of the
detective story, which underlie much hard-boiled fiction. Later detectives,
notably Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, became even more eccentric
and Poe’s nameless narrator had his counterpart in the amiable Dr. Watson. In
“Rue Morgue”, Poe introduced three common motifs of detective fiction: the
wrongly suspected man, the crime in the locked room, and the solution by
unexpected means.

2.- CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENRE

2.1 Hero-Heroin

The first protagonists were usually detectives. As the genre evolved, he or she
became a policeman, an insurance salesman, a politician, a reporter, a crook,
etc.

The protagonist embarks on a journey of discovery in order to attain a goal or to

recover something lost. These figures faced dangers, challenges, and
temptations that were physical, moral, material and sexual. Success depended
on the acquisition of special knowledge. Detectives answer to a higher authority,
whether God or Reason; they have special powers.

2.2 Detective Code

When the protagonist is a detective, she or he is presumed to have a set of

ethics or moral values. These are called “the detective code”, or simply “the
code”. The detective should be anonymous, avoid publicity, be close-mouthed,
and secretive. He or she protects good people from bad people, who do not live
by the rules; thus, one may break the rules in dealing with them. The detective
ignores rules and conventions of behaviour, because the client pays for this.
Loyalty to the client is very important, but may be superseded by a personal
sense of justice or the rule of law.
2.3 Common Plots

Some of the more common apparent plots involve:

- An apparent crime that the revealed plot shows to be a repetition of an earlier

crime.

- The wealthy family with a problem or secret.

- The antagonist who is a double of the detective or the author.

- Cleaning up a corrupt town.

2.4 Female Fatale

The female fatale, defined simply, is an irresistibly attractive woman, especially

one who leads men into danger. She is usually the protagonist’s romantic
interest. The protagonist’s involvement with her may range from mild flirtation to
passionate sex, but in the denouement, he must reject or leave her, for the
revealed plot shows her to be one of the causes of the crime.

3.- THE GOLDEN AGE OF DETECTIVE FICTION

The “Golden Age” of Detective Fiction refers to the years between the two
World Wars, and Golden Age detective fiction writers are those who were
working in England at that time, including among others, Dorothy L. Sayers
(1893-1957) and Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Both authors wrote beyond those
years, of course, as did many other writers of the period, and numerous later
writers adopted Golden Age conventions.

-Agatha Christie (1890-1976): Ms. Christie is one of the best known mystery
writers in the world. She was born in Devon, England, and educated at home.
She was married to Colonel Archibald Christie just after the start of World War I.
She worked in the dispensary of a hospital during the war which contributed to
her knowledge of poisons. She wrote her first book, “The Mysterious Affair at
Styles” during time off from work. The book was rejected by several publishers
before being accepted. She was divorced from Christie in 1928. In 1930 she
met and married the archaeologist Max Mallowan. She was prolific writer, and
several of her books are classics of the mystery genre.
4.- AMERICAN AUTHORS

4.1 Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

Dashiell Hammett wrote his first fiction under the pseudonym Peter Collison.
This American novelist also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. During
World War I Hammett served a sergeant in an ambulance corps. At that time the
worldwide Spanish influenza epidemic spread fast, and especially in military
installations. Hammett contracted tuberculosis. He spent the rest of the war in
hospital, and for much of his life suffered from ill health.

Hammett’s best known books include “The Maltese Falcon” (1930), filmed three
times. It introduced detective Sam Spade who is investigating the murder of his
colleague, detective Archer. Hammett’s first short story appeared in the
magazine “Black Mask”. In this magazine, Hammett became one of its most
popular writers. Under the pseudonym Peter Collinson, Hammett introduced a
short, overweight, unnamed detective employed by the San Francisco branch of
the Continental Detective Agency, who became known as the Continental Op. In
the three dozen stories between 1929 and 1930, featuring the tough and
dedicated Op, Hammett gave shape to the first believable detective hero in
American fiction.

Hammett’s language was unsentimental, journalistic; moral judgments were left

to the reader. The first-person narration of the Op stories is left behind and
Hammett views the detective protagonist in the book from the outside. This
philosophy also marked Hammett’s attitudes when he was questioned about his
Communist contacts which he did not reveal them. “The Glass Key” (1930) was
apparently Hammett’s favourite among his novels. The central character, Ned
Beaumont, was partly a self-portrait: a tall, thin, tuberculosis-ridden gambler and
heavy drinker. In 1934 Hammett began working as a scriptwriter for the comic
strip “Secret Agent X-9”.

In the 1930s Hammett became politically active. He joined the Communist Party
and was a fierce opponent of Nazism. Hammett himself was drinking heavily
and had problems with his writing. In 1948 he was vice-chairman of the Civil
Rights Congress, an organization that the Attorney General and F.B.I deemed
subversive. For his communist beliefs Hammett became a target during
McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade. He was blacklisted and when Internal
Revenue Service claimed that he owed a huge amount in tax deficiencies, the
federal government attacked his income. The rest of his life Hammett lived in
and around New York, teaching creative writing in Jefferson School of Social
Science from 1946 to 1956. Hammett died penniless of lung cancer on January
10, 1961.

4.2 Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

He was born in Chicago 1888. His father was a railroad engineer, an alcoholic,
and an unfaithful husband who abandoned his family after he divorced
Raymond’s mother in 1895. Though Chandler resented his father greatly, in
later years, it would become evident, in marriage to a much older woman that
Chandler came to take on many of the characteristics he had so disliked in his
father. After receiving a strong, classical education, Chandler tried his hand in
freelance work. In America, Chandler settled in Los Angeles, a city whose
people he did not like and never grew to like. He soon fell right into the hands of
California’s oil boom of the 1920s. At the age of 32, he was given a job in the oil
business, and before he knew it, he had risen to the top of the industry. It is this
experience in the oil industry that led Chandler to criticize the corruption of such
industries, as he does in “The Big Sleep” through the character of General
Sternwood. It was at this point, during his involvement in the oil business, that
Chandler fell to the vice of his father: drinking. Chandler was fired from his job,
and, as the Great Depression of the 1930s had set in, he set his mind against
the corporate world and began to once again dedicate his time to writing.
Chandler began to write for the Black Mask, a magazine that published
detective fiction and mysteries. He wrote his first novel, “The Big Sleep”, in
1939, in a time frame of only three months.

The novel carries with it much of the cynicism of 1930s America. The catchy
dialogue of the main character, Philip Marlowe, is the epitome of what came to
be known as “hard-boiled” style, the racy, clever, tough street talk of the
detective narrative. “The Big Sleep” broke away from the previous style of
detective fiction, which includes narratives such as the Sherlock Holmes tales
and the novels of Agatha Christie. He was also unconventional in plotting, in his
play with order, and in the addition of more than one plotline.

5.- BRITISH AUTHORS

5.1 Phyllis Dorothy James

P. D. James (1920) who started writing in the 1960s, is generally regarded as

one of the most interesting of contemporary British crime writers, and is often
located “in the line of their Golden Age predecessors”: “the New Wave Queens
of Crime”.

The eldest daughter of an Inland Revenue Official, P.D. James moved with her
family to Cambridge, where she attended the Cambridge High School for Girls.
She worked for the National Health Service (1949-68) and the Civil Service until
1979 when she began to work as a full-time writer. She was a Governor for the
BBC, and Chairman of the Literature Advisory Panel at both the Arts Council of
England.

James’ works date back to Agatha Christie’s ingenious plotting and evocative
settings. A James plot is a well-oiled machine, efficient and balanced in a style
many modern detective-fiction writers hardly aspire to attain. Her settings reflect
an impressive variety of interests, often esoteric and sometimes obscure. She
speaks for a certain social class and way of life. She wrote “Cover her face”,
that was followed during this period by “A mind to Murder” and “Unnatural
Causes”. She co-authored with Thomas A. Critchley “The Maul and the Pear
Tree”, a recounting of a real life murder from the annals of 19 th century London.
The settings of four of her mysteries are in medicine-related facilities: a
psychiatric clinic in “A Mind to Murder”, a nurses’ training school in “Shroud for a
Nightingale”, a private home for the disabled in “The Black Tower”, and a
forensic science laboratory in “Death of an Expert Witness”.

P. D. James has been awarded major prizes for her crime writing in Great
Britain, America, Italy, and Scandinavia. In 1999 she received the Mystery
Writers of America Grandmaster Award for long term achievement. She is
published widely overseas including the U.S.A, Canada, France, Germany,
Portugal, Finland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Spain, etc.