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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Criminal Records : Page 1, 2, 3 British culture and society had begun to change radically after the war, but British crime fiction was slow to reflect these changes. Thus while Europe was still pondering whether or not these shoes go with that revolver, the real action was happening elsewhere: America. With a few exceptions, the US had never really taken to crime fiction in the manner that the British had, but while the Golden Age was running its course in Europe, a far less genteel form of the genre was being born in America from the pages of pulp magazines—the hard-boiled detective novel. Innovative writers like Dashiell Hammett brought a much greater (and some would argue much-needed) degree of realism to the genre. These new authors focussed on the moral and psychological aspects of a criminal act and shifted the emphasis of the crime novel from the crime itself to the character of the detective. Dashiell Hammett, best known for his Sam Spade and Continental Op mysteries, is recognized as the first master of this brand of fiction. But if Hammett introduced the private-eye, then Raymond Chandler defined him. It may not get much better than Chandler at his best. His observational skills are unparalleled and his sensitivity towards the highs and lows of the human condition without peer. His plots are ingenious and human, dealing not with world-threatening conspiracies but rather with ordinary people doing little things to each other that won’t make a bit of difference to anyone except themselves and Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s classic detective. Innocent yet wise, honest but cynical, occasionally brutal and frequently rather stupid, Marlowe is a real person in an unreal environment. Perhaps most importantly, the Marlowe series can be credited with beginning the trend towards stories about people that contained crime, rather than vice versa, which represented a major departure from the way crime novels had been written up to that point. Following on the noir heels of the gritty realism of Hammett and Chandler, the 1950s in the U.S. witnessed the advent of an even more realistic side of crime fiction: the police procedural. This genre was largely popularized by Ed McBain, whose books depicted the grim realities of police work in the big city. Where McBain left off, Michael Connelly took over with his dark series featuring LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. The psychological mystery also grew in importance during this period. Authors such as Patricia Highsmith sought to plumb the depths of their characters personalities and explore the psychology of guilt and the effects of crime upon the individual in society. It is arguable that Highsmith introduced a more literary element to the crime genre and more recent authors such as Val McDermid and Minette Walters have followed on in this tradition. Increasingly, crime fiction as a genre has become difficult to stereotype as the past thirty years have seen a host of new authors and sub-genres introduced with no one vein taking over as the dominant art form. Crime fiction is one of the few branches of literature that learns from itself, taking what was done by previous generations and perfecting it, redefining it or altering it to suit new purposes. An example of this learning process is embodied in the cadre of latter-day authors writing in the Post-modernist pulp tradition, including Carl Hiaasen, Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy and Walter Mosley. These ferociously dark and funny realists have taken the genre to new heights with their unexpected and unpredictable takes on the age-old art of pulp. Mosley’s protagonist Easy Rawlins, the reluctant and existential black detective of his bestselling series broke the color barrier of the largely white arena of crime fiction. Then there’s James Ellroy, who writes hard-boiled crime novels set in the 1950s Los Angeles underworld and who has a self-professed perverse fascination with murdered women, stemming from the mysterious killing of his own mother in 1958 when he was just ten. Another relatively recent phenomena in the world of the private-eye novel is the introduction of the female private-eye. Modern-day authors such as Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich have created marvellous, lasting p.i.’s like Stephanie Plum (and her grandma), V.I Warszawski and Kinsey Milhone. |
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