I was interested in this statement that Jonathan Langford made in # 13.

“Hard-boiled detective novels happen in settings where society and social structures are seen as irredeemably corrupt, or perilously close to that. Golden-age stories happen in settings where society is seen as fundamentally sound, despite the presence of evil.”

I actually would argue that there is not much difference between the two, perhaps only one of degree. Both involve a search for truth, and both involve a conflict of good vs evil, and good always seems to be on the somewhat disadvantaged side, struggling against either superior numbers, moral ambiguity, or official indifference.

I’m currently reading a fascinating mix of the two genre, “Drood”, by Dan Gibbons (”The Terror”). It’s a detective story set in the close inner circle of Charles Dickens and his literary friends. One can hardly think of a more Golden Age author than Dickens, but in this meticulously researched novel, Dickens in his later life is shown as being a potential murderer, actual philanderer, and obsessed with some occult aspects of mass hypnotism (mesmerism, in his times).

The protagonist is all but forgotten author Wilkie Collins, who is very hardboiled, and anything but a saint himself, addicted to laudanum, and two different mistresses. The setting of Victorian London is important, as are the gritty realism of a more modern novel, yet it’s sprinkled with truly Dickensian moments as well. The interplay of the ages/genres are what make it so interesting to me.

You wrote: “With this in mind, I concede that “fundamentally sound, despite the presence of evil” is closer to the day-to-day experience of a majority of wealthy western people. However, it is a less apt metaphor for the state of humanity: lost, fallen, and naturally inclined to all manner brutality.”

I’ll agree with this. Part of where I’m coming from is my uneasiness with use of the term “realistic” as a shorthand for this kind of difference. As you pointed out, “realism” can mean many different things–and at least some of them have been used as value judgments against types of literature that are seen as less realistic.

I think the first part of what you’re saying is that many of the golden-age mystery stories made crime itself exotic. Yes?

One of the peculiarities of the mystery genre is that for many readers and writers, the mystery must revolve around the presence of a corpse. One of the pleasant things about the Sherlock Holmes stories is that many of them aren’t about murder at all. Robbery, yes, but murder, no.

When you say, “Violence in golden age detective fiction is usually domesticated,” do you mean “domesticated” in the sense of happening within the domestic home/family situation? In any event, it’s an interesting observation. Hard-boiled detective fiction, on the other hand, often happens in a business setting. Yes?

Anyway (in case I haven’t said it), thanks both for writing such a thought-provoking initial post and for your patience in responding to my further thoughts.

The choice to portray society as “irredeemably corrupt, or perilously close to that” or “fundamentally sound, despite the presence of evil” is not merely incidental or a matter of taste. At least not in Chandler’s view of the redemptive potential of hard-boiled detective fiction. (Undoubtedly a vast majority of this particular sub genre is not redemptive, but I never intended to make that claim.)

I think you make a valid point about many mystery fans: they read for setting because they are looking to escape. Fair enough. If you are going on a vacation, I can see choosing 1930’s Oxford over Chandler’s Los Angeles. But I am proposing a different reason for valuing this kind of story.

Thus, I concede that “fundamentally sound, despite the presence of evil” is closer to the day-to-day experience of a majority of wealthy western people. However, it is a less apt metaphor for the state of humanity: lost, fallen, and naturally inclined to all manner of brutality.

Please note that this isn’t meant as a pejorative for either kind of literature or its readers. Actually, I think it’s an interesting question (that hasn’t received nearly enough study) just why different people prefer different things in literature…

Are you saying that Doyle, Christie, Sayers, et al., lack “violence, evil, [and] cruelty”? Because it seems to me that there’s plenty of that in all three of them.

What’s different about the universe Chandler describes isn’t that it includes evil, but that it has little of good. In particular, good in the world of the hard-boiled detective (as I understand it) is something almost wholly absent from those in power in society. The hard-boiled detective, despite his rough and battered edges, is more truly good than the wealthy and powerful among whom he moves–because they aren’t good at all.

That’s a preference for a particular kind of setting. The distinguishing characteristic of this setting isn’t its capability to tell redemptive stories, because such stories can be told in other kinds of settings as well–including the settings describes by Doyle, Christie, and Sayers.

I will agree that this isn’t the kind of story those writers necessarily tell (though Sayers’s Gaudy Night, again, seems to me to fit the bill). Sherlock Holmes stories aren’t fundamentally about redemption. They’re about something else–what, I don’t think we’ve really discussed here.

I also find myself skeptical that redemption is really a defining characteristic of the hard-boiled detective novel per se. Sure, the protagonist is engaged in a quest for truth (in a limited sense). But how many of these novels really qualify as “redemptive”? I’ll defer to you on this, because you’re the one who’s read more of them; but I don’t find many stories in any genre that I’d call truly redemptive.

So when it comes down to it, what I see as the biggest difference between hard-boiled detective stories and golden age detective stories is not one of theme but (again) one of setting. Hard-boiled detective novels happen in settings where society and social structures are seen as irredeemably corrupt, or perilously close to that. Golden-age stories happen in settings where society is seen as fundamentally sound, despite the presence of evil. Obviously, that has a major impact on the type of story that’s told in those two kinds of settings–but it’s still, as I see it, fundamentally a difference in where you (as the reader or writer) choose to spend your time, and with what kind of people.

Realism can mean verisimilitude in portraying a particular setting. I am using it that way, but not exclusively so. Realism also signifies subject matter (common, universal, “gritty”) and style (plain, direct, concrete).

So a setting might be portrayed as “realistically” as possible and yet be so extraordinary that it is completely unsuited to capturing what the best detective stories are about ((1) the universal human tendency to violence, evil, cruelty and (2) redemption).

And I wish Chandler’s view of the dark side of humanity was more anachronistic! I don’t do much criminal defense. But I hear truly gritty stories over lunch all the time. And this is in Cache Valley!

Agreed. It seems that the difference between the two attitudes is the difference of time. Doyle’s writing was at the end of an era of romanticism and adventure. After the Great War attitudes changed generally, and the entire modern movement is evidence of hard boiled, gritty realism, leaving the romance and sensationalism of the Victorian era far behind. This is shown plainly in 1930s detective fiction.

It may be argued that the modern viewpoint is more accurate and realistic than the older Victorian ideas; however, I think this simply a difference in paradigm shift. To the Victorians, their literature was realistic in describing their attitudes and perception of their time. Certainly Doyle was a romantic; one can have that count against his ability to convey reality. At the same time however, I am not sure the world is quite as seedy as later crime fiction depicts it.

“And I still think that which mysteries readers prefer on the whole has less to do with which are more realistic, and more to do with which settings and character types fit the reader’s individual taste.”

People favor one time period of literature over another. It is the difference between Rudyard Kipling and T.S. Eliot – and is evidenced in detective fiction as well. Christie is interesting in this respect – in her works she often echoes the sensibilities of the past through the inappropriate behavior found in the youth of the modern era, thereby connecting the two time periods without getting into the depth of organized modern crime (at least in her early works).

For those who adore Doyle over his successors, it has a lot to do with returning to that romantic era.

You wrote: “However, Hammett and Chandler (and their heirs: James Elroy, et al.) are much more about realism, plot, and character development than, say, the Holmes books and the so-called golden-age detective stories (including Sayers and Christie).”

Obviously, I’ve read much less of Hammett et al. than I have of what you refer to as “golden-age” detective stories. But I still think that what’s being purveyed in that brand of detective novel isn’t “reality” as such, but rather (at most) the reality of a specific milieu.

Your quote from Chandler may, I submit, represent his take on “the world you live in”–but only his take on that world. And only one particular incorporation of that world. A lot of it sounds pretty anachronistic–and very specifically American.

Compare that, for example, with Oxford University of the 1930s, which I suspect has seldom seen a more realistic portrayal than Sayers’s Gaudy Night. Other Sayers novels often show a similar realism, whether it’s describing an ad agency or a small East Anglia village. Even Agatha Christie seems at least semi-realistic when she’s talking about villages, and not grand conspiracies. It’s not a gritty kind of realism, but it’s realistic nonetheless.

The one detective of the hard-boiled school whose work I’ve read a fair amount of is Erle Stanley Gardner. Gardner was a well-known defense attorney in southern California who actually did a lot of the sort of things that his character Perry Mason did. (The book version, by the way, is a lot more enjoyable, in my opinion, than the sanitized TV version of my youth.) The writing wasn’t particularly high-quality, but it was engaging at least in part because Gardner was good at vividly describing the world he took us into.

And then there are all those detective stories set in the middle ages, which clearly are largely *about* taking readers to a version of the middle ages–whether more or less realistic depends on the particular author involved.

I guess where I wind up on this is that realism can be an aspect of setting. But that’s true whether it’s a gritty setting or a less gritty one. In any event, the setting of Chandler’s novels is probably at least as far removed from the reality of my day-to-day life as Dorothy Sayers’s Oxford University. (More so, to tell the truth.) In both cases, I suspect that part of what attracts most readers to the books is being drawn into what is *for the readers* an exotic milieu. Hence my claim that whether you prefer Chandler or Doyle is largely a matter of which setting you prefer to read about.

I’m not even sure I agree that the realism of the setting (as opposed to its grittiness) is necessarily part of what makes it good or bad. I think there can be fairly well-written books that deliberately choose not to invoke a very realistic setting. Even mysteries without a terribly “realistic” setting–like Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who books (which I wouldn’t call great literature, but which are undoubtedly quite popular)–tend to have a distinct sense of place that is also clearly part of their appeal: in this case, a romanticized and not-gritty-at-all version of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

So maybe I’ll agree with you that realism is an important part of quality in writing mysteries; I’m not sure about that. I’m quite sure, though, that I don’t agree that realism is what sets the hard-boiled school apart from the golden-age writers. And I still think that which mysteries readers prefer on the whole has less to do with which are more realistic, and more to do with which settings and character types fit the reader’s individual taste.

I agree and disagree. There is a fundamental structure underlying all mystery stories that goes something like this: a character with some kind of special power (a cop, a shamus, a librarian) encounters evil and reverses it in some way (exacts revenge, gets a conviction, solves a puzzle, etc.) So it is generally true that what “changes” in mysteries is the evil around which the story is built. The detective can’t change too much without losing her power as the evil-taming force. (Indeed, some detective stories are about exactly that–the detective being overwhelmed by evil and failing. See Chinatown. J.J. Gittes is transformed, and it is dark.)

However, Hammett and Chandler (and their heirs: James Elroy, et al.) are much more about realism, plot, and character development than, say, the Holmes books and the so-called golden-age detective stories (including Sayers and Christie). It is not easy to generalize about such a range of works! Indeed, I think authors like Chandler were reacting against mannered mysteries that they saw as insubstantial fluff.

My point: I disagree (strongly!) that setting and maybe the central character’s personality are the only differences between cozy mystery X and hard-boiled noir Y. Like Chandler says, the genre is fundamentally redemptive. And things like realism and good characters mark the difference between the silly and the sublime.