Detectives - the dominant characters of the 20th Century Discuss

sufi said:

Ellroy overthought the whole thing in particular directions, but i think sees himself as a continuation of this heritage trail
he goes in for this chopped out language that is kind of like the succinctness of a gritty hardbioiled gumshoe but can come over affected
also i think he over enjoys the fascistic hyperviolence Frank Millar also. as i was saying upthread it's' close to "real life crime" stories experience
doesnt ellroy bump off the detective character in one book and go alng with with the cops instead?

Click to expand...

sufi said:

Ellroy overthought the whole thing in particular directions, but i think sees himself as a continuation of this heritage trail
he goes in for this chopped out language that is kind of like the succinctness of a gritty hardbioiled gumshoe but can come over affected
also i think he over enjoys the fascistic hyperviolence Frank Millar also. as i was saying upthread it's' close to "real life crime" stories experience
doesnt ellroy bump off the detective character in one book and go alng with with the cops instead?

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

Admit it? He's positively proud... and there is no maybe about his mum's murder is there?

Click to expand...

WashYourHands said:

All the NCSI CSI GCSE franchises, infinitely terrible, you can paint anything on this guff

Most narratives are detective formats these days, add a family for some emotion, partnerships, corruption, tits

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

Admit it? He's positively proud... and there is no maybe about his mum's murder is there?

Click to expand...

william_kent said:

Oh he admits it, no doubt! But would i? Any takers,,,

Click to expand...

sufi said:

make a thread

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

Admit it? He's positively proud... and there is no maybe about his mum's murder is there?

Click to expand...

The Rockford Files​

The Rockford Files is an American detective drama television series starring James Garner that aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974, and January 10, 1980, and has remained in syndication to the present day. Garner portrays Los Angeles–based private investigator Jim Rockford, with Noah Beery Jr. in the supporting role of his father, Joseph "Rocky" Rockford, a retired truck driver. The show was created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell. Huggins had created the television show Maverick (1957–1962), which starred Garner, and he wanted to recapture that magic in a 'modern-day' detective setting. In 2002, The Rockford Files was ranked No. 39 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.[1]

Click to expand...

william_kent said:

Nice! I've been drunk the last two nights ( I blame @catalog for last night - I've noticed he has not posted a scan of the label of the "lager" I bought him at the great Northern Dissensus meet up ) so I am not appreciating the carefully crafted nuances embedded in what I imagine to be the enthralling posts that precede this....

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

This is exactly what I'm looking for.

But with that start bit it seems to me you're saying something that reminds me a little of the standard explanation for why people like to believe in Conspiracy Theories; the idea that there is someone behind it all with reasons for what they do is comforting in a strange way even if that person is evil.

And so a detective who can put everything together, figure it out and solve it is comforting, cos that very process implies again that there is a solution, there is an explanation and even if the normal person can't see it, we know that a funny little Belgian man with over-active grey cells can.

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

One thing that ties in with this a little I think... Sherlock Holmes (and also, is it, Dupont in the Murders in the Rue Morgue?) are almost magic geniuses who instantly solve the problems.

We are all very familiar with Holmes providing impossibly accurate descriptions of someone ten seconds after meeting them - "The left cuff of your shirt was slightly more frayed which could only mean..." - and in TMITRM there is a bit where the narrator is walking along lost in reverie and the detective breaks into his thoughts to answer the exact question he was struggling with. He explains this by saying "I saw you pause by that wall and then look at the sky..." and reconstructs his entire train of thought this way.

In each case this is entertaining but completely ridiculous, there are many possible reasons for the frayed cuff or pausing by the wall, yet the detective unerringly picks the correct choice in hilariously long chains.

But by Poirot this kind of incredible power of deduction has been abandoned. In parallel with humanity's increasing uncertainty Poirot is not as superhuman as Holmes, however compared to later, more modern detectives he still has an impossible level of certainty.

Does that make sense? And do you agree?

Click to expand...

Mr. Tea said:

True, but I think he also just duffs up a few blokes with his fists. There's also that scene where a really massive guy who's a blacksmith or something, who by rights ought to be able to snap Holmes in half like a twig, starts menacing him, and Holmes responds by grabbing an iron bar that's just handily lying there and bends it in half with his bare hands.

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

We are all very very familiar with Holmes providing impossibly accurate descriptions of someone ten seconds after meeting them - "The left cuff of your shirt was slightly more frayed which could only mean..." - and in TMITRM there is a bit where the narrator is walking along lost in reverie and the detective breaks into his thoughts to answer the exact question he was struggling with. He explains this by saying "I saw you pause by that wall and then look at the sky..." and reconstructs his entire train of thought this way.

In each case this is entertaining but completely ridiculous, there are many possible reasons for the frayed cuff or pausing by the wall, yet the detective unerringly picks the correct choice in hilariously long chains.

Click to expand...

Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!

Click to expand...

IdleRich said:

I did mention Holmes on coke.. although he has nothing on Douglas Fairbanks' detective in The Mystery of the Leaping Fish...

Click to expand...