Orchard Press Online
Mystery Magazine
June 30, 2002
 |
CRIME BEAT
by Paul Davis |
Copyright © 2002 Paul Davis. All rights reserved.
Everything The Well-Dressed Private Detective Ought To Be
"I thought I saw everything during my years as a cop," a retired police detective once told me. "But I was wrong. I have seen much, much more as a private detective."
Private investigators are hired to sort through the unsavory affairs of people’s lives. They routinely encounter the baser instincts of man; anger, envy, avarice and lust. In my years of covering the crime beat, I’ve come to know a good number of private investigators; many of them retired police officers or federal agents.
Thanks to the portrayal of private detectives in crime novels, movies and TV programs, the "private eye" is a distinctly American character. But unlike their fictional counterparts, real investigators rarely get into fist or gun fights, they don’t speed precariously through city streets chasing bad guys and they don’t routinely obstruct official police investigations.
Real private investigators are state-licensed and regulated professionals. The work they perform is as varied as the clients. There are legal investigators, corporate investigators, insurance investigators and financial investigators, as well as hotel and store detectives. They investigate marital infidelity, pre-employment background checks, personal injury and insurance claims. Some investigators specialize in locating missing persons or witnesses for legal proceedings.
For most investigators, their time is divided between working the computer and performing interviews and physical surveillance. The work can be interesting, but like police detectives, the work often involves tedious surveillance and preparing mounds of reports and logs. Fictional detectives tend to lead a more mysterious, dangerous and eventful lifestyle.
The first detectives of popular fiction were gifted amateurs who solved murders like a parlor game, often to the dismay of the bumbling police. Hard-boiled detective fiction took a some-what more realistic approach when Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective, wrote short stories for Black Mask Magazine in the 1930s. He went on to write classic detective novels like "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man."
"Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish," Raymond Chandler said of his fellow Black Mask contributor.
"He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before."
Chandler, in my view, surpassed Hammett and is the best crime writer in America. He has influenced generations of crime writers and a good case can be made that he is the single most influential crime writer. He is one of my favorite writers and I try to re-read him every few years.
"Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." – From "Farewell, My Lovely"
Chandler admitted that Philip Marlowe, his Los Angeles wisecracking, incorruptible, hard drinking, tough guy private detective, was not realistic. He said that a man like Marlowe would no more be a private detective than he would be a university don.
"The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective," Chandler said.
But Chandler also stated that crime fiction should be realistic in its character, setting and atmosphere. Chandler’s realism also clearly comes through in his observations, dialogue, and style.
"The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives." - From "The Little Sister."
Chandler led an unusual life. Born in Chicago and raised in Kansas and Ireland, he was educated in England, France and Germany. He worked as a reporter, poet and essayist before joining the Canadian Army to serve in combat during WWI. He later became a successful oil executive before his heavy drinking caused him to fired. He began writing crime stories for Black Mask Magazine in his forties and at the age of 50, he published his first Philip Marlowe novel, "The Big Sleep."
"I was wearing my powered-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaven and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars." – "The Big Sleep."
Chandler was devoted to his wife, Cissy, a one-time beauty who was 18 years his senior. They moved frequently to different locations in Southern California and rarely socialized. Chandler was an avid letter writer and corresponded with friends, other writers, editors and fans. I find his letters to be as brilliant as his novels. An editor working on a collection of his letters, asked her publisher: Did he ever write a dull line?
Chandler was hired by Hollywood to write the screenplay for "Double Indemnity." Working with Billy Wilder, whom he disliked, Chandler produced a screenplay that was better than the book, I think. Between his screenplays and the films made from his novels, Chandler was a major film influence.
Tom Hiney, in his "Raymond Chandler: A Biography," quoted the movie journal Sequence, "Just as Chandler has many literary imitators, so has his work exercised a considerable influence on the treatment of crime. He helped to bring back to the cinema some of the healthy realism lost so carelessly in the early 30s to the demands of a minority censorship. What is certain, at any rate, is that since 1944 his work has done much to form the basis of a school of film making as indigenously American as the Western, the social comedy, the musical and the gangster film."
Chandler wanted Cary Grant to play Philip Marlowe (think "Mr. Lucky"). But Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Eliot Gould and others portrayed his detective character on the screen.
James Garner, who played his detective in 1969’s "Marlowe" is my personal favorite. Based on the novel "The Little Sister," the film had a contemporary setting. Had the film been properly set in the 1940s, I think it would have been a near perfect adaptation.
"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." – From "Farewell, My Lovely."
Chandler never fully recovered after his wife’s death. He said she was the center of his life for 30 years. During his last years, he continued to drink and traveled aimlessly. He divided much of his time between London and California. He died on March 26, 1959 at the age of 70.
But Chandler’s influence lives on. His oft quoted essay, "The Simple Art of Murder," presented his definitive view of the private detective in fiction.
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. 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 phase, 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."
Chandler’s Novels:
The Big Sleep
Farewell, My Lovely
The High Window
The Lady in the Lake
The Little Sister
The Long Goodbye
Playback
One should also read "The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler," edited by Frank MacShane and "Raymond Chandler: A Biography," By Tom Hiney.
Contact the Author - daviswrite@aol.com