Jim wrote:
"The Sternwoods in THE BIG SLEEP and the Dains and Leggets in
THE DAIN CURSE, after all, were just as upper class as anyone
in Agatha Christie or S.S. Van Dine."
However, the hardboiled investigators were most assuredly not
of that class. This gave the narrator, in both cases the
first person investigator, an outsider status from which to
comment on the upper class. On top of that, the classical
mystery was mainly British (yes, I know Van Dine's were set
in the US, but they were written to the British model, at
least the one I've read) where a person's class is more set
from birth (with less interaction between classes, at least
during the time of the classical mystery, if not still) than
the myth of class mobility would have us believe it is in the
US. Because of that belief, we are often obsessed with the
trappings of class and what sets them apart from each other.
So it makes sense that US hardboiled would look to expose the
dark underbelly of the Horatio Alger myth.
Mark
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