easily parodied moment in a detective story is the one in which the investigator
gathers all involved in the crime and its investigation and dramatically presents a
fully coherent narrative of the misdeeds and the misdoers. But at heart, and as intro-
duced by Poe, the moment of telling the whole story is really about the rivalry
between the detective and the criminal to control the narration of the crime. The
detective is charged with creating the true and coherent story of how a crime occurred
and who is responsible, while the thief or killer schemes to fragment the storyline.
However, the pieces they inevitably leave in place, or leave in view, become the clues
(bits of paper, fragile alibis, things witnesses see, hear, smell) that allow the detective
to reconstruct the tale of the crime and its cover - up. It is therefore almost a compul-
sion on the part of fi ctional detectives to let their rivals know they have been bested,
and to do it in the form of textual or linguistic exchange – a sort of narrative victory
lap. Near the end of “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue, ” Dupin coaxes the sailor to
his house not only to prove to himself that he was correct in his reconstruction, but
to let the sailor know exactly how he fi gured it out. At the resolution of
“
The
The Detective Story
429
Purloined Letter, ” Dupin cannot resist creating a facsimile letter that will let Minister
D
—
know that it was indeed he who understood the scheme and re
-
purloined
the letter.
At the same time as villains and detectives are locked in a power struggle, there
is a profound intimacy between them. At the beginning of “ The Murders in the Rue
Morgue ” and then again near the end of “ The Purloined Letter, ” our narrator asserts
that excellence at simple games like checkers and evens - odds requires the intellectual
acumen to “ admeasure ” one ’ s opponent and the imagination to “ identify ” completely
with his or her intellectual proclivities. Dupin explains that the Prefect ’ s inability to
see a stolen letter hidden in plain view is symptomatic of his mediocre intellect: “ the
Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, fi rst by default of this identifi cation and,
secondly, by ill - admeasurement. … They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity;
and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would
have hidden it. ” (Poe 92 – 3). And that, of course, is what a detective must do: think
like a murderer to catch a murderer. In Poe ’ s stories this is a comfortable premise;
Dupin is, after all, well acquainted with Minister D — . He alludes to their shared
past, he is close enough to drop in on the Minister at his apartment, he knows that
his true personality is different from the one he projects, he knows what conversational
subject will distract his foe while he scans the room. Both write poetry, and each can
identify the other ’ s handwriting on sight. Clearly, Minister D — and Auguste Dupin
are the sort of doubles that Poe so enjoyed portraying. They are so intimate that, with
their shared initial and the hint that Dupin comes from an “ illustrious ” (Poe 6) family
and that Minister D — has a brother, David Lehman wittily concludes that they are
brothers (95 – 6). In any case, his relationship with Minister D — draws Dupin out of
his armchair and into the most active investigative role of the three tales. He not only
fi nds the letter with his own eyes, but also takes it upon himself to steal it back. His
objective is to protect the honor of the noblewoman involved, which has political
implications as well.
Poe thus introduces the idea that detectives not only think like criminals, but
sometimes commit criminal acts in service to their personal sense of justice. The
blurring of the line between detectives and the crooks they pursue is not always as
playful as it is in Poe ’ s story. Many detectives, especially in the hard - boiled style, are
morally ambiguous. Others are changed by their intimacy with treachery, greed, lust,
betrayal, and violence. They may become cynical, they may become enraged by the
cruelty they see around them, or they may fi nd relief from their own demons in
chasing down villains. Readers sometimes wonder if they are being changed by
reading about these worlds of crime and the characters who inhabit them, and that
is part of the reason for the apologies readers make; every reader knows someone who
disapproves of the content of crime fi ction. One of the most common complaints
concerns the glorifi cation or aestheticization of violence and villainy in detective
stories; to this way of thinking, these stories encourage something deeply corrosive
to the social fabric. Ross MacDonald turns that premise on its head when he remarks
that “ [a]n unstable balance between reason and more primitive human qualities is
430
Catherine Ross Nickerson
characteristic of the detective story. For both writer and reader it is an imaginative
arena where such confl icts can be worked out safely, under artistic controls ” (11). In
other words, detective fi ction civilizes us.
While we have looked at several of the relationships between the players in the
detective story, we haven
’
t yet taken up the question of the dynamic between
the reader and the villain. In her 1913 textbook for a correspondence course in “ The
Technique of the Detective Story,
”
Carolyn Wells, a prolifi c writer of mysteries
herself, offers the following advice on creating a villain: “ he must be both intelligent
and ingenious, in order to give the Transcendent Detective a foeman worthy of his
steel. The reader must have no liking or pity for him. In his perfection he should be
what Poe calls ‘ that monstrum horrendum , an unprincipled man of genius. ’ Moreover,
he must be cleverly drawn to conceal his identity to the last. He must appear to be
what he is not, and he must not appear to be what he is ” (237). If the ideal villain is
a genius, and thus admirable, but “ unprincipled, ” we can see how he is a double for
the detective. But can ’ t he or she also be a double for us, the readers? Since we are,
like the detective, trying to think like a murderer, we must sometimes realize that
all that differentiates us from the criminals is our principles or other restraints on our
behavior (and, of course, if we are reading detective stories on our metal bunks in the
state pen, the identifi cation will be all the stronger).
In his Postscript to the Name of the Rose , Umberto Eco observes that the only character
in a detective story who has never committed the murder is the reader (Lehman 2).
Most of the time we are trying to fi gure out who is the “ least likely suspect, ” that
person whom Wells says “ does not appear to be what he is, ” and ingenious authors
have made detectives and even narrators the perpetrators. But as David Lehman points
out, who is a less likely suspect than ourselves? “ The murderer as the reader? Never
– which is to say on some implicit, metaphorical level, always. … Readers of detective
novels participate in perfect murders – perfect because they offer us a vicarious and
therefore socially acceptable form of releasing our homicidal instincts without ever
having to face the consequences ” (2). Lehman is not so much questioning the morality
of reading detective fi ction as he is suggesting that we all feel guilty about something,
we all wonder what we are capable of under the right circumstances. Again, as
MacDonald argues, it is the conventions of detective stories that make them safe
“ arenas where such confl icts can be worked out . ”
Detective stories, then, raise the big issues about how fi ction works: about what
makes a narrative authoritative and a believable representation of events. They throw
the complex relationships between writers, their characters, and readers into high
relief. They demonstrate the way in which all literature weaves convention and origi-
nality in complex patterns. Some require us to consider every aspect of human psy-
chology, the effect of social injustice, how power corrupts, and why terrible fates befall
fi ne people. Matters of intellect, writing, and speaking are highlighted in Poe ’ s stories,
which seems natural given the aesthetic temperaments of Dupin and our narrator.
But even the most hard - boiled detectives spend a lot more time talking to people,
refl ecting on what they have to say, delivering snappy comebacks, and crafting
The Detective Story
431
amusing metaphors than they do shooting pistols and being beaten up. One of
Hammett ’ s detectives explains to a young murderer how he cracked the case: “ You
talked too much, son. … That ’ s a way you amateur criminals have. You ’ ve always got
to overdo the frank and open business
”
(59). Detective fi ction is in fact a genre
obsessed with language at many levels.
That preoccupation with language, especially in the form of texts like secret letters
or forged wills, comes in part from the detective story ’ s relationship to Gothic narra-
tive. It is a remarkable fact that the modern detective story was created by a writer
best known for his horror fi ction. Several critics have suggested that Poe invented his
detective, a machine for “ ratiocination, ” in order to hold the monstrosities of his
imagination at bay. Other critics adjust their angle of vision slightly, and suggest
that the detective fi gure is a product of, rather than an outsider to, the disordered and
frightening world of the Gothic mode. If Gothic narrative develops secrets, compul-
sions, and sadism to a fever pitch, eventually it also needs to create characters who
can restore some level of justice and harmony. Detective fi ction – part of that broader
category of mystery – has remained closely related to the horror genre. We can also
trace connections to the Western and to science fi ction.
When we begin to contemplate the wide range of stories that include crimes and
secrets that require investigation, we are quickly confronted with broader issues
about literary genre. For one thing, we use the term genre in several ways, applying
it to different orders of things. It can mean something as broad as the difference
between epic and lyric poetry, or fi ction and essay. It can apply to the demograph-
ics of the readership, as in the “ young adult novel. ” Indeed, there is such a term,
slightly pejorative, as “ genre fi ction, ” which usually includes the popular categories
of detective, science, and horror fi ction. One is tempted to abandon the term alto-
gether, but it can be useful when the context is clear. In the study of popular
culture, genre is a term that usually indicates content; sub - genre can either indicate
a more narrowly focused content (like “ police procedural ” ) or point to style or tone
( “ noir ” ). The main sub - genres of the very broad category of crime writing include
detective fi ction, spy novels, police procedurals, political thrillers, mysteries. Within
detective fi ction, we speak of the puzzle story, the domestic style, the golden age
or classical story, the hard - boiled style, the feminist hard - boiled, the cozy, and on
and on. Many of these terms overlap, and some are more tied to a specifi c time
period than others.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about genre is how quickly genres hybridize
with each other and how new genres come into being. Sometimes they morph gently
from one to the other: Dupin becomes Holmes who becomes Hercule Poirot and Miss
Marple. Other times they are direct refutations of what has come before. In a famous
manifesto of the hard - boiled style, Chandler mocked the “ golden age ” style (including
Agatha Christie and her many British and American imitators), declaring that
“ Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people who commit it for reasons … and
with the means at hand, not hand - wrought dueling pistols, curare, and tropical fi sh ”
(16). Hillerman points out that, since the early twentieth century, the main division
432
Catherine Ross Nickerson
among writers and readers of detective fi ction has been into two camps: those who
believe the stories should focus primarily on the puzzle to be solved and those who
believe the genre can and should be a more expressive form, with fl eshed out charac-
ters, a deep sense of place, and a desire to portray the strengths and fl aws of American
culture. These questions about the rivalry and hybridization of genre are not peculiar
to detective fi ction, and contemplating them invites us to think about the broadest
issues of originality, infl uence, tradition, expectations of what fi ction is supposed to
do, and the meaning and uses of “ realism. ”
Given the multiple sub - genres of the detective story and recurrent debates about
its capabilities, it is impossible to trace a clean trajectory from Poe to the present day.
But we can see ways in which creativity and variation are tied to historical moments,
resulting in new kinds of detective stories that disrupt some of the ideas about gender,
race, and social class that were established in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century
(in both the classical and the hard - boiled styles). Notably, a new wave of feminist
writing emerged with the women ’ s movement in the 1970s. Of course, women had
been highly successful detective fi ction writers all along, but there was an alignment
of values and goals between second - wave feminism and the work of Amanda Cross
(who created her no - nonsense professor - sleuth in 1964), Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton,
Sara Paretsky, and S. J. Rozan, the last four of whom have done the seemingly
unthinkable: challenged the premise that the hard - boiled style is only for men. Like-
wise, we can trace African American crime writing back into the nineteenth century,
but a reclamation of the detective story began in the 1990s, with the work of Walter
Mosley, who injects humanity into noir and then turns it on its head, Eleanor Taylor
Bland, who deliberately tells the stories of people who are voiceless – children, the
elderly, the mentally ill – and Barbara Neely, who shows how keen an eye a domestic
servant has. These works came at a time when the mainstream media were particularly
warpe
d, and especially enthusiastic, in their depiction of African Americans as per-
petrators of crime, from welfare fraud to drug dealing and gangsterism (in life and in
rap). They propose a corrective narrative to replace the scenarios where people of color
are always the perps and never the cops. Hillerman, in his Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee
series, took the police procedural out of the city and on to the Navajo reservation with
his stories of contemporary Native American life.
In spite of all its metafi ctive, epistemological, and social - critical charms, the genre
is a second - class citizen in the world of letters; this marginalization is a source of pain
to many writers and publishers of detective fi ction, and has been from its earliest days.
Of course, many canonical American writers have experimented with the detective
story, including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Gertrude Stein, and many more
were infl uenced by it, including Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway,
Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, and Paul Auster. In the introduc-
tion to the anthology Women on the Case , Sara Paretsky argues that the struggle of
women detective fi ction writers is nothing more and nothing less than the struggle
of all women writers: “ This collection is an attempt to continue the work that Barrett
Browning began [in Aurora Leigh ], to make it possible for women to broaden the
The Detective Story
433
range of their voices, to represent their age for women, to describe women ’ s social
position, their suffering – and their triumphs ” (xi).
Hillerman writes that Chandler ’ s “ use of the work of a private detective to illumi-
nate the corruption of society has attracted into the genre many mystery writers who
wish to shoot for lofty literary goals. Driven out of the so - called mainstream of
American writing by the academic critics and the academic trends – minimalism,
deconstructionism, and whatever is next – we have found a home in the mystery
form ” (xviii). While detective stories have in fact received the critical attention of
scholars famous for other subjects
–
Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson, Geoffrey
Hartman, John Irwin – and while detective fi ction does show up quite frequently in
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 93