Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History

This pleasant but slight history of the distinctly American figure of the hardboiled detective opens by proposing that “for every tough season in American history, there is a detective who emerged to handle it.” Lee (Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority), a Georgetown comparative literature professor, argues that at moments of crisis, from Prohibition to the opioid epidemic, hard-boiled detectives have functioned as “wishful American self-portraits” who apply frontier individualism to societal anxieties and morally ambiguous situations. Lee traces the prototype back to 1923, when pulp fiction writer Carroll John Daly introduced his wildly popular character Race Williams. She then proceeds through the ’30s, with Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe; the ’40s, when Mickey Spillane created an explicitly anticommunist detective in Mike Hammer, and up to the present. Her argument becomes strained as this type of character becomes demonstrably less popular—indeed, her main contemporary example, Netflix series lead Jessica Jones, is also a superheroine, suggesting that the hard-boiled detective’s symbolic significance has faded over time. Despite this limitation, for detective fiction fans, this will prove an entertaining and informative trip through American history alongside their favorite gumshoes. (Aug.)