Vol. 60, No. 11 — November 1979 —
The Great Detectives
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An investigation of the modern
mystery story and its fascination to devotees the world over,
in which we attempt to unravel the puzzle of why Sherlock
Holmes, Inspector Maigret and the rest should live although
they were never born...
The cookbook called for white instead of red wine in the
coq-au-vin, with just a drop of sloe gin 15 minutes before
serving. The author, French food critic Robert Courtine, explained
that this is what Madame Maigret prepares and "simmers with
love" for her husband Jules, better known to detective story
fanciers around the world as Chief Inspector Maigret of the
Paris police. Courtine had pieced the recipe together from
references in several Maigret stories. Since Madame Maigret
is from Alsace, he specified an Alsatian Traminger both in
the sauce and to be drunk with the dish.
The use of the present tense in the recipe is instructive
in that it shows how certain literary creations can loom so
large in our minds as to become virtual living persons. Every
reader of the Maigret stories knows that Maigret is frequently
detained from sitting down to his wife's delicious offerings
by the untimely demands of his work. Readers also know that
Madame Maigret keeps a tight rein on her patience when this
happens. They sympathize with both of them; she in her kitchen
with the dinner over-cooking, he sitting with his stomach
grumbling in a car on some shabby side-street waiting to confront
a suspect. To Maigret enthusiasts, the Chief Inspector and
his good wife are alive and - apart from the occasional bout
of indigestion - well.
In the world of detective fiction Maigret stands with the
great Sherlock Holmes himself on that transcendental plateau
of literature where their fictional doings are, to the reader,
intimate reality. We have come into their households just
as they have come into ours - in Holmes's case a very strange
household indeed.
It has been said, though with no such definitive proof as
the subject himself would demand, that Sherlock Holmes is
the best-known character in all of English literature. He
is a member of that most exclusive group of imaginative creations
who have outlived not only their creators, but their era.
Through films, radio, television and comic strips, the peculiarities
of Holmes's personality are known to vast numbers of people
who have never read the original Holmes stories. In what must
be the ultimate test of immortality, many madmen evidently
believe they are Sherlock Holmes.
This probably would have pleased his creator, Arthur Conan
Doyle, a spiritualist who dabbled in the ways of immortality.
Conan Doyle hugely enjoyed the game of persuading readers
that Holmes was a real, if somewhat shadowy, human being.
He did this by deftly scattering references to actual persons
and events throughout his stories. Their tongues in their
cheeks, Holmes scholars are only too happy to keep the game
going to this day.
The first thing they will tell you is that the Holmes stories
were not written by Conan Doyle at all, but by a rather stuffy
but good-natured chap named Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes societies
everywhere (and they are everywhere) operate on the
elementary premise that Holmes and his apostle really did
make their headquarters in their lodgings at 212B Baker Street.
The address does not exist now, but they explain that is because
of demolition and rebuilding since Holmes's and Watson's heyday.
It is reported that the firm which occupies the nearest number
to 212B regularly receives mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.
So, long after the last hackney vanished from the gaslit
streets of London, Sherlock Holmes still strides conceitedly
across the stage of fancy, practising what Watson called his
speciality - omniscience. Since Conan Doyle's copyright finally
lapsed a few years ago, new books and films about Holmes's
adventures by other authors have been appearing regularly,
supposedly culled from hitherto-undiscovered documents. Holmes
is still capable of bowling over readers and audiences with
the might of his mental processes. He is doing very well for
a man of 125 years of age.
What is it that makes fictional detectives, above all literary
figures, live on agelessly in our imaginations? A conversation
among any group of mystery story fans - which means almost
any group of people who like to read for relaxation - will
turn up endless minutia about the lives of characters who
never existed in the strict sense of the word. You might hear
about how Charlie Chan not only has a number of sons but a
daughter; about how Hercule Poirot once failed to tell someone
who thought he was French that he was really Belgian; about
how Nero Wolfe might just be Sherlock Holmes's illegitimate
son, the issue of a liaison between the great detective and
a forgotten lady long ago in Montenegro (the clue is the similarity
in the spelling of the two names; note the identical vowels).
In at least one instance a fictional detective may be found
slipping into this state of mind himself, with the curious
effect that his excursions into unreality lend him a special
air of reality. Inspector Van der Valk of the Amsterdam police,
the creation of author Nicholas Freeling, is an avid reader
of Maigret stories. He often wonders when faced with a particularly
difficult problem what Maigret would do in a case like this.
Obviously the lasting appeal of the imaginary detectives
has much to do with the type of story in which they are the
leading players. Everybody loves a mystery. Small children
are enthralled by the mysterious, hence their passion for
riddles and hide-and-seek. Adults tend to like puzzles of
all kinds, none more than the puzzle of who is responsible
for the corpse on the drawing-room floor.
Other heroes come and go, but detectives
go on forever
In common with characters in comic strips and television
serials and situation comedies, fictional sleuths owe at least
part of their familiarity to the fact that they keep appearing
in one story after another. But while the other types soon
fade from memory when their stint in the limelight is over,
the detectives retain their prominence through constant retellings
of their adventures in reprinted paperback books and fresh
adaptations for television, film and the stage.
Yet, despite the fact that no lesser a literary figure than
Edgar Allan Poe is credited with writing the first modern
detective stories and such splendid writers as Dashiell Hammett
and Raymond Chandler have specialized in them, detective fiction
is still not fully recognized as a serious art form. The more
earnest literary critics frown upon mysteries. Only recently
an historian of the detective genre put it down as "pre-eminently
the literature of the sick-room and the railway carriage".
But if art is any reflection of the preoccupations of society,
then the persistent demand for crime fiction in all media
should make it an important variety of art.
In the television age, the literary critics have been joined
by their counterparts who sit in judgment on TV in suggesting
that the public really ought to turn its mind to something
better than crime and mystery. They complain that far too
many tough cops and clever sleuths come and go on the screens
in our homes. But it should be noted that as fast as such
shows go, new ones emerge, and old ones make a reappearance.
Their attractiveness must say something about the inner feelings
of their consumers, including an atavistic fascination with
robbery and murder. Still, if people are interested in crime
for its own sake, they are also interested in punishment.
They like the thrills that go with deception and pursuit,
but they are not on the side of the criminal. They want to
see justice triumph in the end.
This is where the fictional detective comes in - as an instrument
of justice. He is the man (or, in rare cases, she is the woman)
who overcomes all the perplexing and occasionally dangerous
obstacles to see to it that wrong-doers pay for their crimes.
Moreover, the detective achieves justice when it seems as
if it will not be done through ordinary channels. If it were
not for his skill and diligence in penetrating to the heart
of the mystery where less intelligent and intrepid people
would have failed, the culprit would have got off free.
The image of the detective as a modern
knight errant
According to some historians, the detective's non-fictional
antecedents are considerably less noble. The original detective,
they say, was at best a spy and at worst a stool-pigeon who
operated on the seamy fringes of the centralized police forces
of the cities of Europe in the mid-19th century. Detectives
were regarded with suspicion and hostility by the public and
looked down upon as a necessary evil by the police.
A more literary approach to the history of the detective
gives him a more aristocratic pedigree. Here he is seen as
the successor to the knight errant of old, that wandering
figure who comes into a situation at a moment of crisis, rights
the wrongs, and then rides off in search of new wrongs to
right. Could it be that our classic modern sleuth, our Philip
Marlowe or Lew Archer or Kojak, is really a reincarnation
of that man riding in pursuit of a holy grail, that rescuer
of endangered maidens? If so, does that account for the detective's
pull on the imagination? Is there something deep within us
that makes us want to believe in the reality of such a man,
even though we are aware that he exists only on paper or on
a screen?
There can be no question about our psychological need for
heroes. A hero is someone bigger than life, and the detective
certainly fills that bill. He is smarter and, in most instances,
stronger than most of us, and he has a keener sense of integrity.
He is usually as much a protector of the weak and innocent
as a hunter of the guilty.
Softness and humanity in the chief
of the
homicide squad
Perhaps the most unusual of all detective heroes - and some
think the greatest - is the above-mentioned Inspector Maigret.
Maigret makes a good focal point for any discussion of the
differences and similarities among fictional detectives, and
of why they are capable of living in our minds.
Maigret is the creation of an acknowledged writer of genius,
Georges Simenon. Simenon has written more than 150 novels,
the bulk of which are not mystery or detective stories; Maigret
figures in only about one-third of the author's works. In
his other novels, Simenon deals with themes like sickness,
old age, ignorance, suicide and madness.
It was into this nightmare world that, in 1930, Simenon
introduced the serene and reassuring figure of Inspector Maigret.
Critics have seen two faces to Simenon's work: tragedy and
wisdom. The wisdom shines forth in the Maigret stories, where
the stark themes of tragedy, subjected to the uncompromising
glare of Simenon's artistry, come under the softening influence
of Maigret's humanity.
Softness and humanity are not words one would normally associate
with the chief of the homicide squad in a great city. But
the reader soon finds that Maigret is closer to essential
human concerns than the other great sleuths. Their personalities
and lifestyles set them apart from everyday life and ordinary
people. Most of them are bachelors with a pretty insensitive
approach to the opposite sex. Almost all are eccentric in
one way or another. They usually make a point of thumbing
their noses at convention.
Maigret, on the other hand, is one of us - a quiet, pipe-smoking,
rather overweight fellow who would make a good neighbour.
He is no tough guy of the American pattern, forever punching
out or shooting down his adversaries. On the contrary, he
is touchingly vulnerable.
In Maigret's eye, the question is not
"whodunit", but why?
His thinking runs counter to that of the general run of
fictional detectives. Mystery stories usually hinge on a puzzle
that demands a solution; in the orthodox "whodunit", the overriding
consideration is to unknot the puzzle and thereby solve the
crime. Maigret is not so much interested in who did it as
in why they did it. The killer's identity is often
revealed at least half-way through the story. In one famous
case, we are told in the title: Le Charretier de la Providence.
All of which might seem to lead to the conclusion that Maigret
is so different from the others as to be in a class by himself.
Actually, though, he is the exception that proves the rule.
For he is above all a public protector, as are all his confrères
in the realm of fictional crime detection. They all bring
their wits, their instincts, and sometimes their muscles to
bear on the task of restoring the social certainties that
have been upset by the commission of a crime.
"In the complex and perilous world of the metropolis he
acts as the defender of embattled innocence and the champion
of the dominant social morality," literary historian Ian Ousby
wrote of the fictional detective. Whether an upper class gent
like The Saint or a rough diamond like J. D. MacDonald's Travis
McGee, the detective's place is on the side of the standards
of honesty and decency to which the majority subscribe.
Seen in this light, our paper detectives really are modern
knight errants. It is difficult to picture Agatha Christie's
Miss Marple or G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown riding in on
horseback to rout villains and vandals, but that is basically
the tradition they followed every time they applied marvellous
intellects to the question of who disturbed the social order
by exterminating another human being.
We can only hope that heroes like these
really do exist
In addition to the fact that detective stories are fun and
make excellent harmless tranquillizers, they would indeed
seem to owe some of their enduring popularity to a human need
for knight errant images. Moral philosophers have said that
knight errants represent the conscience. Even Don Quixote
tilting ridiculously at the windmills is an expression of
the latent nobility of man coming out to confront the dark
forces that trouble the soul.
The question of why we should want to believe in these mythical
creatures to the extent of pretending they actually exist
leads us back into the comforting, tobacco-scented presence
of Inspector Maigret. Maigret is good, strong, simple, wise,
and understanding. Who would not want to believe in a man
like that?
The same goes for all the other great detectives (take your
pick) suspended in time as they strive in their own particular
ways to accomplish justice. For without the possibility that
people with the will and skill to deliver us from evil walk
the earth, where would we be? We can only hope that such people
exist not only on paper - that somewhere there really are
heroes fighting for the freedom from molestation that is the
basis of everyday civilized life.
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