Some Authors' Musings on Detectives and Detecting

This post is Raymond Chandler's fault. It's not really a coherent commentary, but closer to an exorcism I would guess. I was reading an essay by Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder," which I found interesting, even if I didn't agree 100% with him. But, it was the ending that started me off and eventually was responsible for this collection of quotes taken from a few mystery writers, one or two who may be considered Classic while others are too new to have reached that exalted level.

Chandler's essay started me thinking, especially about his thoughts on the detective and detecting. I noticed that some other writers had done the same, and I now began paying more attention to these little asides that now stood up and waved at me. Now that I have become aware of them, something must be done about them. So...


So, the ending of Chandler's essay:

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I'm quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."

Are Chandler's detectives like this--Philip Marlowe, for example. Does Chandler come close, or do you think he meant the above more as an ideal to strive for, rather than something that could be achieved?

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After reading the above, another example immediately surfaced --Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and his attempt to explain to Brigid O'Shaughnessy just why he was going to turn her in:

"Listen. this isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around--bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. That's--"

I wonder what Chandler would have thought of Sam Spade. Does Spade fit Chandler's description of what a detective, or at least his detective, must be like? Is Spade a lonely man, a proud man, an honorable man? What would Chandler have thought of Spade's affair with his partner's wife?

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Hakan Nesser is one of the writers too young to be considered a classic, but he's won a number of awards for his detective novels in his native Sweden. This quote isn't so much about detectives but about the art of detecting. The novel's title is Borkmann's Point, and I misunderstood it to be a geographical location. It isn't. Borkmann was Chief Inspector Van Veteren's mentor when he first joined the Swedish police force. Borkmann's rule refers to a specific point in an investigation:

"In every investigation, [Borkmann] maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don't really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more that some decent thinking. A good investigator should try to establish when that point has been reached, or rather, when it has been passed; in his memoirs, Borkmann went so far as to claim that it was precisely this ability, or the lack of it, which distinguishes a good detective from a bad one.

A bad one carries on unnecessarily."


Any thoughts? It's a rather large claim being made here. I know there have been times in the past when I was doing research for a paper, and at some point, I had to simply stop the search for more information and start to write. It was at that point that I felt I was losing track of my initial idea and was being buried under mountains of data. More often than not, I found I had too much data, and seldom did I have to do more research because I lacked information.

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Thomas H. Cook's detective in Sacrificial Ground provides us with a different view of the detective--the angst-filled cry of a lonely man, tormented by what he has seen and now struggling to justify himself to himself. He is neither Philip Marlowe nor Sam Spade.

"He returned to the living room and once again sat down on the sofa. He felt the need to view his life as some kind of whole, as if it could be captured in a single tone or color. But nothing held firm. Nothing but his work, his pursuit--however blind and full of error--of something which could be called justice, or at least, retribution. People had to pay for what they died, and he was one of the ones who made them pay. It was the badge which gave him the right to do that, and he suddenly found ;that he wanted to cling to it with all his remaining strength. Nothing could bring back Sarah, or Angelica or Ollie Quinn, or any of the scores of others whose bodies lay torn and broken in his memory, but whose spirits still moved sleeplessly through him They were more real to him than all the living who crowded the streets and buses. They lived more fully in his mind, and their flesh was warmer and more tangible. It bled and bled, as if the one great heart of all the unjustly dead still beat on through the ages, their cries still ringing out through time, heard like a low moan in the ground or like a scream echoing above it."

He strikes me as being a very different sort of person. Is he too much involved with the victims to be able to step back and think rationally about the crime? Should his feelings help him or hinder him in bringing the killer to justice?


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Here's another take on detectives and detecting--this time by W. J. Burley, author of a series of mysteries featuring Chief Superintendent Wycliffe, a representative of one of my favorite type of mysteries--the British police procedural. Wycliffe is on recuperative leave in a small seacoast town, in which a murder has taken place. He manages to stay clear of it for some time, but as in all novels with this premise, it isn't long before he gets involved. His reaction to his involvement, even though he's on medical leave?

"[Wycliffe] went to his room and replaced the photograph and the report in Gill's file. He would never have admitted it but for the first time since the start of his enforced holiday he was beginning to enjoy himself. He was indulging in the most delectable kind of pleasure which is both anticipatory and lightly spiced with guilt. Yesterday he had felt tantalisingly excluded from the community of the village, a spectator on the outside; now with this drab-looking file he was licensed to become a privileged interloper . Now, if he wanted to, he could probe into their lives; winkle out their secrets.

Often, at the start of a case, he would savour the prospect as one might turn the pages of a new autobiography or take a peep into a bundle of someone else's letters. The chance to live vicariously in other people's skins; for him, one of the attractions of the job. He knew it to be unworthy and salved his conscience with the reflection that he was rarely censorious, never malicious though always insatiably curious."

Burley's Wycliffe is a different sort of detective, one who in some ways resembles what others always assume police officers and PI's are--the snoop who gets a thrill out of looking through other's dirty laundry. I wonder what Chandler and Hammett and Nesser and Cook would think of him. Which detective of the four authors I just mentioned would most understand Wycliffe? Or would any?

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One last one--this comes from John Maddox Roberts' series of Roman mysteries featuring Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus and is set approximately 50 b. c., give or take a few years. Caesar has not yet finally demonstrated that the days of the Republic of Rome are over.
At one point in the novel, SPQR III: The Sacrilege, Decius meditates on the art of detecting:

"There are stages in the investigation of a crime, conspiracy or other mystery that involves many people acting from many motives. At first, all is confusion. Then as you gather evidence, things get even more complicated and confusing, But eventually there comes a point when each new fact unearthed fits into place with a satisfying click and things become simpler instead of more complex. Things begin to make sense. I now felt that things had reached that state. It seemed to me that my guardian genius, my ferret-muse, hovered near and was aiding me to untie this knot of murder and intrigue.

Or perhaps it was just the wine."



In wine, there is truth, so perhaps it was just the wine.

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Of course, these are only a few of the ways that writers have written about detectives and the art of detecting. But, these are the ones that have stayed with me for some time now. In spite of the variety of methods and attitudes of the detectives, some of which seem almost contradictory, they most always get their man or woman in the end. That must mean something, but I'm not sure what.

In the Beginning...

In a recent post I said that a novel written by Thomas H. Cook, Breakheart Hill, had a first line that reminded me of the first line of a favorite novel of mine, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. Ford began his novel with "This is the saddest story I have ever heard," while Cross started with "This is the darkest story that I ever heard."

Several days later, I turned to the first page of another novel and found awaiting me the following: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." Of course, Dickens' Tale of Two Cities is a unique novel in that it is the only one that I am aware of that not only has one of the most famous opening sentences in literature, but also one of the most famous endings in literature: it is Sidney Carton's soliloquy that ends the novel: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

This set me off thinking about well-known beginnings; just hearing them brings back memories of the works involved. I suspect many of them would be recognized even by people who had never read the texts.

Part of the popularity of these openings is the relationship to the novel. For example, Ford's narrator, Dowell, and Cook's narrator, Ben, tell us that this story is one that they heard. It's as if they also are readers, and not participants as we would expect. What's intriguing about this is the puzzle creates for the reader--just why do Dowell and Ben tell us this is a story they heard?

Another well-known opening, perhaps, some might argue, the most famous in English literature, is "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." I suspect this is more "universally acknowledged" among mothers of marriageable young ladies than it is among single men with good fortunes. And, in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, we see how this works out, with three marriages taking place between the covers of the book. A careful reading will show that actually only one of the single men involved was in want of a wife, and he was the one without a fortune. Perhaps Bingley and Darcy didn't know they were wanting a wife, in the beginning anyway.

Melville's Moby Dick is longer than any of the novels I've mentioned so far, so it is only fitting that it has one of the shortest opening sentences: "Call me Ishmael!" He's being bit evasive here as he says to call him Ishmael, not that his name is Ishmael. In the Bible, Ishmael is the son of Abraham and his wife's servant Hagar. Abraham disowned him and drove both Ishmael and Hagar out into the wilderness when his wife, Sarah, gave birth to Issac. Ishmael now has the meaning of a exile or outcast. Who is Melville's Ishmael?

A opening to a work that I suspect is the most widely read and recognized would be from Genesis--

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light."

Along with being one of the most widely-known opening lines, it is no doubt one of the most influential opening lines.


Novels aren't alone in producing memorable opening statements. Beethoven's opening to his Fifth Symphony is recognized by many who have never heard the entire symphony. And, I wouldn't be surprised if hundreds of people could identify and finish the following opening to a TV show that ran more than forty years ago: "Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the ..." George Lucas was also well aware of the importance of the opening statement when he began the "Star Wars" series, not with an opening action scene, but with a text message that slowly scrolled its way from the bottom to the top of the screen: "A long time ago in a galaxy far away..." That evoked memories of an opening statement that is almost a cliche: "Once upon a time...," surely the most common opening, in English anyway, for a fantasy tale.

I have a few personal favorites too:

"Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He won't see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow."

and

"Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that put the stars to flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light."


How about you?

Any favorite openers?

Or, ones that I've forgotten?

Thomas H. Cook: Breakheart Hill

Thomas H. Cook's Breakheart Hill was recommended to me by a friend. This is the first one by him that I've read, and frankly, I probably wouldn't have read it without a recommendation. It's not that I have heard anything about him that would discourage me, but there are so many writers out there that he would most likely have gotten lost in the crowd, without being pointed out to me.

Therefore, when I opened the book, I had no idea of what to expect and was grabbed immediately by the very first sentence. The novel begins, "This is the darkest story that I ever heard." I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite novels, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, which begins "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." Coincidence? And, as I read the novel, I couldn't help but wonder if Cook had read Ford's novel.

Both novels are first person narratives in which the narrator looks back on his life and on the lives of those around him. Both narrators tell the story not in a chronologically coherent manner but wander back and forth, from the present to the past and then to the present again, and somehow at the end do manage to get the story told. Both writers employ the first person narrative to give the work a claustrophobic air by suggesting that there is so much more to be told, but the reader is trapped inside the head of a narrator who either doesn't understand what is going on until it is all over (Ford's novel) or chooses not to tell all he knows (Cook's novel). In addition, both novels focus on the actions of a small group of people and the way each affects the others in the group.

While there are structural similarities between the two novels, they are still quite different. Cook may have been influenced by Ford when he decided on the narrative structure and the opening sentence, but this is where the similarity ends. Dowell, Ford's narrator, knows nothing of what is going on around him. The relationships of his wife, and their best friends, the Ashburnhams, and the transient members of their little group, escape him completely. Consequently, he is unable to see the impending tragedy until he is confronted by it. On the other hand, Ben, Cook's narrator, frequently tells the reader that he alone knows the full story, and that he has spent the past 30 years making sure it never gets out, at least by him, anyway. The reader can only wonder why, and speculate.

Breakheart Hill is aptly named. It is the story of the events leading up to and resulting from a murderous attack on a teen-aged girl which took place on the appropriately named Breakheart Hill, just outside of the small town of Choctaw, Alabama. It is this event that has haunted the narrator and his friends for the past thirty years, and it is clear that her life wasn't the only one that was ultimately destroyed, or damaged in some way. At the end, I could only wish that she hadn't submitted that poem, or that Ben had not agreed to become the editor of the school paper, for it is a story about small and seemingly insignificant events and their unintended and unimagined consequences.

I'm not giving anything away when I say that the central question throughout the work is the narrator's involvement in the crime. It is, to me, the most significant element of the novel. This question arises in the first chapter:


"And yet there are times when I do hear certain things very distinctly: her body plunging through the undergrowth..."

"From time to time, though rarely, I actually hear her voice. It is faint, but persistent. Sometimes it comes in the form of a question: Why are you doing this to me?"


Elsewhere, he says that he can see her eyes raised to him in confusion and bewilderment.

And, it is clear that others, including Luke, his best friend of 30+ years, look at him suspiciously. Or, is that only his guilty conscience at work?

Throughout the work, I considered three possibilities: 1) he is guilty; 2) he is indirectly responsible; or 3) he has deluded himself into blaming himself for it. Cook skillfully encourages this by Ben's numerous, ambiguous reflections on past events that could support all three possibilities, and probably a fourth that I didn't see.

Breakheart Hill is not an action-oriented, page-turner. It moves deliberately, as the narrator slowly unveils the events that inexorably lead up to Breakheart Hill. It is not to be read in small portions--a page or two hastily in a few spare moments--but in large chunks, free from distractions.

Overall Rating: Highly recommended.