Kevin Burton Smith (kvnsmith@colba.net)
Mon, 8 Nov 1999 10:10:52 -0400
Aw, gee, is it time to dump on Grafton/Paretsky/Muller again?
Has it been a month already? Don't you guys ever get
tired?
Most of the "grievous" crimes they've been charged with had
already been committed years earlier by male writers, anyway.
Lectures on morality? Try Chandler. PC asides on politicial
and moral issues? Try John D. Macdonald. Over-the-top
political rants? Try Mickey Spillane. Rambling about the
environment and flowers? Try Ross Macdonald. Details of their
personal lives and relationships? Try Ed McBain or Robert
Martin or Thomas Dewey (the Pete Schoefiled series) or Bart
Spicer. Or Robert Parker, for that matter. Too many recurring
characters? Try Joe Gores' DKA Files or The Rockford Files.
"Women's" issues? Max Allan Collins actually predated most of
the female writers, with his abortion, children and
pornography storylines in his Ms. Tree stories.
Really, the only thing really novel (although it is a biggie)
about Grafton, Paretsky, Muller et al was the gender of their
detectives, and a certain view from a modern female, instead
of a 1930's-40's male, perspective.
(By the way, although they're all lumped together all the
time, they're all very different writers, at least as
different as, say, Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald. They are
definitely not interchangeable.)
****
Oh, and I forgot an important item in my list of
firsts:
The first story featuring a private investigator, or at least
one who works for a detective agency
(and thereby I'm presuming some sort of
professionalism):
"The Black Sleuth" by John E. Bruce
(1907-09, serialized in McGirt's Reader)
I've never read this one, and only stumbled across a
reference or two recently. It's probably not too hardboiled,
but it might be. Who knows? The detective, SADIPE OKUKENU, is
an operative for a private detective agency, in this case the
International Detective Agency, predating Hammett's
CONTINENTAL OP (and Daly's THREE GUN TERRY) by at least
fifteen years! And Sadipe is black, which is pretty
cool.
In his one recorded case, Sadipe is on the trail of a stolen
diamond, which takes him from England to America and back
home to Africa, and allows him, as Gary Phillips says, in his
essay "The Cool, the Square and the Tough," to ruminate "on
the state of race relations on these various
continents."
If anyone's actually read this, I'd love to hear their
comments.
Hmmmm....ruminations on a social issue? In 1907? Maybe the
alleged decline and fall of the hardboiled detective story
can be traced directly to Sadipe. Maybe he didn't wear the
right clothes.
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
IT'S OFFICIAL! October is Dashiell Hammett Month. Don't play
the sap for anyone.
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