Back in 2015, John Walton,
UC Davis, published The
Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction with the University of Chicago Press.
From the publisher: “I’m in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they don’t want to take to the cops.” That’s Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, succinctly setting out our image of the private eye. A no-nonsense loner, working on the margins of society, working in the darkness to shine a little light.
The reality is a little different—but no less fascinating. In The Legendary Detective, John Walton offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of the 1930s and ’40s. Drawing on previously untapped archival accounts of actual detective work, Walton traces both the growth of major private detective agencies like Pinkerton, which became powerful bulwarks against social and labor unrest, and the motley, unglamorous work of small-time operatives. He then goes on to show us how writers like Dashiell Hammett and editors of sensational pulp magazines like Black Mask embellished on actual experiences and fashioned an image of the PI as a compelling, even admirable, necessary evil, doing society’s dirty work while adhering to a self-imposed moral code. Scandals, public investigations, and regulations brought the boom years of private agencies to an end in the late 1930s, Walton explains, in the process fully cementing the shift from reality to fantasy.
Today, as the private detective has long since given way to security services and armed guards, the myth of the lone PI remains as potent as ever. No fan of crime fiction or American history will want to miss The Legendary Detective.
Praise for
the book:
"A
fascinating account of the intersection of reality and fantasy, The Legendary
Detective connects Dashiell Hammett's world of such fictional detectives as the
Continental Op and Sam Spade to Samuel Hammett's (the same guy) experience of
the real world of Pinkerton and Burns detectives working to break strikes and
stir up political strife. It's a penetrating story of the development of a
contemporary legend via the interplay of the detective business and the culture
industries which has lastingly influenced our understanding of urban
life." –Howard Becker
"Over
nearly a century, a symbiotic relationship developed between detective
practices and the popular culture industry that depicted them. The Legendary
Detective is a masterly analysis of private detective work within the context
of popular culture, revealing their interweaving and mutual influence.
Mass-market literature made detective work look glamorous, which in turn
provided a model and an incentive for memoirists like Alan Pinkerton, Charlie
Siringo, and William J. Burns. Detectives wrote field and case reports that
they and the home office polished and no doubt embellished to impress clients
whose expectations were influenced by popular culture; fact and fiction
blurred. Walton's analysis is brilliant." –Robert Weiss
"Walton
undertakes careful forensic history to piece together the characters and the
cases. In doing so, he allows us to see why novelists didn’t want to let the
facts stand in the way of a good story. . . . From a historical point of view,
The Legendary Detective has much to recommend it, not least Walton's revealing
of the agencies' murky practices." –Times
Higher Education
Full
information is available here.
