Jim wrote:
> His work certainly has staying power, but to
describe
> the designation "police procedural" as
"quaintly
> inadequate" suggests that a police procedural
can
> never be a "progessively social study of people in
a
> particular time and place."
>
> In fact, it strikes me that it's in the
police
> procedural, the most rigorously naturalistic of
all
> mystery sub-genres, that you are MOST likely to
find
> such studies.
Well, that might depend on how generously or strictly you
define police procedural. If it's to include everything from
Charlie Chan, Dell Shannon and Helen McCloy to anything where
a cop (or cops) is the central character (Ellroy?), it may be
a very hard slog indeed.
The private eye novel could just as easily claim to be the
sub-genre that best gets under society's skin, if you
consider Chandler's LA or even Spenser's Boston. But that's a
false argument. I don't think it's the genre that necessarily
does the talking, but the author.
> It has been observed, for example, that Ed
McBain's
> depiction of NYC in his 87th Precinct series, for
all
> that he pretends that the place isn't NYC at all,
is
> the best sustained literary examination of that
city,
> and its people, anywhere in fiction.
Observed? Possibly by a very selective audience? I think at
one point, in his prime, it may well have been the case, but
I think McBain's latter books felt out of touch and removed;
a little too much 1950s Isola and not enough 1990s-and-beyond
New York. They may have sustained, but I'm not sure they were
always the best. I think, for example, that Lawrence Block's
depiction of New York in the last few decades, particularly
in the Scudder series, rings more true to me and brings the
Big Apple more alive than any of McBain's books of the time.
I forget which book it was, but Scudder walks home one night,
a miles-long wander with the sun coming up while he ponders
the case, and meanwhile reflects on what he sees, how it's
changed, how he feels.
And I think that "feeling" is pivotal -- McBain's view is
essentially a deadpan one; nuanced but ultimately blunt
reportage, cut-and-dried observations by rote (yeah, yeah,
"Isola is a lady..."). Whereas Block's eye is equally sharp,
but like the best writers, there's another layer going on.
Think of MacDonald's Florida or Macdonald's SoCal or Burke's
Louisiana. These places come alive, and we see them not just
through the narrators' eyes, but through their hearts as
well.
> One could say the same of Ellroy's Los Angeles in
the
> '50's,
One could, but I think they'd be wrong. Ellroy goes too far
the other way -- it's all heart and no eyes. For all his
strength's, Ellroy's 1950s LA is a misogynist wet dream, an
intentionally impressionistic wallow in a pit so relentless
and hate-filled and virtue-free, it's almost a cartoon. It
would be like saying Quick Draw McGraw was the
"real" depiction of the Old West.
I've enjoyed many of Ellroy's books, but I've never felt they
really nailed their time and place; just a small cancerous
slice of it
(although it does give him an excuse to say "faggot" and
nigger" and
"kike," which impresses the mouth-breathers a lot).
What the best crime fiction can do well, regardless of
sub-genre, is to expose -- through the "eyes" of its
detective -- a myriad of social, ethnic and cultural worlds.
The detective who breaks out of the self-enclosed circle of
the traditional mystery (which loves desert islands,
snowbound passenger trains, locked buildings and rooms,
isolated little villages, etc.) is free and able to go
anywhere those mean streets lead, be it the Sternwood estate,
some hick town in the mountains or that "shine bar" in
FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.
If Hammett gave murder back to the people who commit it for a
reason, Chandler gave us a whole world for them to hide in --
and a detective able to follow them wherever they go.
He could be a cop, he could be a private eye, he could be a
she -- like, say, a retired porn actress trying to get out of
a bad jam -- but ultimately it's what they see and feel and
report back to us that matters, not what sub-genre cubbyhole
we try to jam them into.
Kevin Burton Smith Thrilling Detective Web Site Holiday Issue
New fiction from Sundeson, Narvaez, Stodghill and Max Allan
Collins. Plus.... the THRILLIES!!!
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