Larry,
Re your comment below:
> You make an interesting point. The old time gum shoe
seems at a loss
> in the sterile world of the forensic crime fighter.
By the same
token
> what an interesting premise. Imagine the
anachronistic dick who
> handles crime in an older, blunt fashion, side
stepping modern
police
> work to bring criminals to justice.
Without commenting on the subject that first generated this
thread, I think you exaggerate the influence of forensic
investigation on the fortunes of the hard-boiled private
eye.
The first mystery series to be primarily based on an accurate
description of forenisc investigation, R. Austin Freeman's
novels and stories about Dr. John Thorndyke, predate both
Daly's Race Williams and Hammett's Continental Op by decades.
This early, and very popular, example of the "CSI" kind of
story did not keep the hard-boiled private eye from
generating in some twenty years later.
Moreover, in one of the first of Hammett's Op stories,
"Slippry Fingers," the clue by which the case was solved
hinged on a piece of forensic evidence. Evidence that the Op
was able to analyze correctly when the professional forensics
people did not.
Forensics and hard-boiled private eyes are not mutually
exclusive concepts.
JIM DOHERTY
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