Miker,
Re your comment below:
> Its not in front of me, but I think the
original
> quote didn't actually say
> that
> the P.I. would become extinct, but that the
romantic
> view we have of what
> he does is false.
That view always was false. It's not any nmore false now, and
it wasn't any less false then. It never was all that common
(at least in the 20th Century) for PIs to investigate murders
or get into shootouts. However, the continued popularity of
characters like Spenser and Amos Walker would seem to be
strong evidence of the durabilty of the "lone wolf PI" as a
fictional construct.
At the same time, let's remember that the "big agency
operative" isn't a recent invention in PI fiction. Characters
like the Continental Op, Donahue, Jack Cardigan, etc., were
all employed by big agencies back in the very beginning of
hard-boiled crime fiction.
JIM DOHERTY
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