The History of Crime Fiction, Research Paper Example

Abstract

Readers globally have long been fascinated with crime, and fiction writers have not been slow to meet the demand for this appetite. Crime fiction, for many, combines the best of all possible worlds, in terms of literary entertainment: it provides the danger and excitement of criminality, the typical inevitability that justice will be served, and the comfort of knowing that the danger is not real. The genre itself may take many forms, from the sophisticated, psychological thrillers of Conan Doyle to the gritty, street-centered fiction of Raymond Chandler. In any mode of presentation, however, it seems that readers never tire of exploring the worlds of vice and the processes of justice in fiction.

Introduction

Although it is usually viewed as a single genre, “crime fiction” actually encompasses quite a variety of fictional styles. The term is commonly associated with violent crime, as well as protagonists who both carry out the crimes and pursue the criminals. Crime, however, is a broad word. Consequently, many works of fiction well-known to the public and not ordinarily seen as belonging to the genre actually apply. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes, for example, are not usually thought of as example of crime fiction, but that is precisely what they are. So, too, are the disturbing and often macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe, who introduced the form of the detective story, equally in the realm of crime fiction. All that is required is that some form of wrongdoing be present, and even retribution and justice are not essential to the genre.

As a consequence of its great popularity, crime fiction suffers from a poor reputation, as literary genres go. Quite simply, too many people enjoy it for critics to elevate it to a higher form of expression, and the inherent factor of violence within it does nothing to recommend it further to those who evaluate literature. This is, however, a narrow point of view. For one thing, the most classic and respected works known to humanity often are marked by extreme violence; from the Medea of Euripides to the finest tragedies of William Shakespeare, extreme violence is built into the foundations of literary masterpieces. Then, it must be remembered that genre never dictates substance. It is simply a category in place for convenience’s sake, and has no bearing on quality. Some crime fiction may be adolescent and poorly written, but a great deal of inferior poetry exists in the world as well. The genre can never be held accountable for variations in substance, and some very great writers have turned their talents to exploring crime fiction because, through criminality, fascinating insights into the human psyche may be explored. As writers have the right to be judged by their best work, so too may genre itself demand that right, and the history of crime fiction, seen in its entirety and through to modern times, reveals an enormous range of story and talent.

Roots of Crime Fiction

As noted, what constitutes genuine “crime fiction” may be open to interpretation. This is certainly valid when examining the origins of the genre. Fiction of any kind virtually always explores the workings of the human mind and heart, and a vast number of motivations behind those workings are of a dark, if not outright criminal, kind. People do what they do, in life and in fiction, frequently inspired by dishonorable or base reasons. In some fiction, this opens the way for introspection and the social consequences of the actions; in crime fiction, the emphasis is on the actions as being not only badly motivated, but illegal.

Nonetheless, the lines are historically blurred. Real criminality is the basis for much of ancient Greek drama. Euripides, for example, not only made Medea, the mother who commits the unspeakable and criminal act of murdering her own children, a figure for the ages, he presented more in the way of extreme family violence in his play, Orestes.  In this drama, based on classic myth, the title character reverses the action of Medea and kills his mother.  It is not so much the law that pursues these characters, but justice in the form of divine fate. It could be argued, nonetheless, that the exact shape of the justice is irrelevant; crimes are committed and the perpetrators suffer because of their actions.

In fact, perhaps the most legendary example of “crime fiction” is Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  It is usual to view the play as a dark, psychological masterpiece, and that is certainly valid; the play is  an acknowledged work of genius.  At the same time, however, in terms of mere structure, it is a murder mystery, which is an identified category within crime fiction.  There is no plot or story without the murder of Hamlet’s father to serve as the foundation, and Hamlet’s own, increasingly bizarre responses to it are variations of detective work. For example, despite having been visited by the actual ghost of his murdered father, Hamlet engineers the performance of the play which will reproduce the crime and expose the guilt of his uncle.   It is, in a sense, a strategy Sherlock Holmes himself might have attempted, as it combines a blending of factual technique and psychological experimentation.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes does, in fact, stand at the pinnacle of crime fiction, in terms of public and critical admiration and popularity. In the late nineteenth century, Conan Doyle’s series of stories revolving upon his urbane, keenly intelligent detective captured the attention of readers in his native England and far beyond. If crime fiction can be said to have a distinguished ancestor known to the entire world, it is Sherlock Holmes. The legendary hero, still enormously popular in both print and film media, set a standard for a certain kind of crime fiction still viewed as the most elevated. This is not to say that the Sherlock Holmes murder mysteries were completely cerebral exercises; on the contrary, the Victorians of Conan Doyle’s day were deeply fascinated by violence, and Holmes encounters quite a lot of raw criminality in his adventures. This contrast, however, is what adds much appeal to the stories. No matter the mystery, Holmes himself was invariably as calm and collected as the Ian Fleming hero of another century, James Bond, would be.

The Sherlock Holmes tales not only helped to invent the specific form of mystery within crime fiction, they exploited all the elements that would make it attractive to readers. For one thing, there is the mystery itself, which is not revealed until late in the story, and which allows the reader to match wits with the fictional detective.  Then, Conan Doyle was never content to simply present basic crimes as riddles to be untangled; he realized that a great appeal in presenting crime-solving was in the psychology behind each case. Holmes would use his intense, deductive powers to analyze clues and physical evidence, but just as much attention would be paid to the “why” of the crimes.

On the other side of the Atlantic, another writer was inventing and shaping crime fiction, and in a manner complimentary to Conan Doyle, even as it predated him. In the earlier part of the century, Edgar Allan Poe was busy constructing what would become the template for the murder mystery. Beginning with the story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, Poe either deliberately created or stumbled upon the device that would later make Conan Doyle legendary, as well as a host of other crime fiction writers: the brilliant detective. The cases and the stories would change all the time, and this single character – with or without a companion to serve as sounding board, as in the case of Holmes’s Dr. Watson – would always provide a thread of continuity and a familiar figure for the reader.

Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, was in many ways the true ancestor, or grandfather, to every popular detective who would follow. He never achieved the success of Holmes, at least partially because Poe was less concerned with making him a unique and identifiable character, one whom the readers might actually wish to come to know. Dupin is, in fact, as much of a mystery as some of his cases. In the initial story,  he is essentially a deducing mind and voice; the reader knows that he is highly educated, that he may have come from a noble family, and that his circumstances are no longer privileged, although he lives comfortably. Beyond this, nothing is really known. It appears that Poe was too absorbed in the reasons behind the crimes to properly focus on the solver of them. Dupin is relatively shapeless as a leading character, compared to the sophisticated, dimensional figure of Sherlock Holmes.

These two great detectives, created within decades of one another and from different societies, form the foundation for what the world would see as the best crime fiction. Both authors did not shy away from sensationalism and extremes in their stories. Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” centers upon how powerful a family curse is,  as Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” improbably depends upon an orangutang as the murderer. It must be remembered that both Poe and Conan Doyle were not necessarily writing for posterity; they were working writers, out to please as large an audience as possible. Nonetheless, each man infused sufficient levels of suspense and intelligence in their crime fiction to take it beyond beyond mere entertainment. They set the standards for thoughtful, intriguing mysteries, and gave the world its ideas on what crime fiction could be, at its best.

Evolution of Crime Fiction

The complex psychology and sophistication of Sherlock Holmes gave way, in the twentieth century, to a very different form of crime fiction, and one with a particularly American style. The immense growth and increasing urbanization of the United States began to translate to this form of fiction, or give it new fields upon which to develop. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes mused over clues and practiced their deductive talents in stately drawing rooms or cafes; in America, the new breed of crime fiction hero was on the streets and in the back alleys of the cities.   It was a gritty, raw, and deliberately violent setting, and it would define crime fiction for decades to come.

Beginning in the 1920’s, and coinciding with the rise and fall of the American economy in those years, the new breed emerged, and in a striking new form. Carroll John Daly began the trend with a series of extremely popular detective stories, initially running in Black Mask and Detective  magazines.  His principal hero, Race Williams, was as unlike a Holmes or a Dupin as a character could be. This new kind of detective did not rely on sophisticated deduction and cool reasoning; he was defiantly low-brow, and frequently got to the heart of a case through the use of brute force, either with his fists or with a gun. Race Williams, in crime fiction, was the first in a line of tough, cynical, unintellectual detectives who would represent popular crime fiction for many years to come.

It is easy to view this kind of crime fiction as “pulp” material, ground out to please masses interested only in sensationalized accounts of crime, sex, and violence. To a large extent, that is what this type within the genre was, and is, all about. The reader gets the thrills of the criminality, all the while knowing that justice will eventually prevail. It is interesting to note, however, that even in this limited form, variations of style and dimensions of character evolved.  By the 1930’s, Dashiell Hammett already honed this rough, detective icon in the character of Sam Spade.  Spade’s first case was “The Maltese Falcon”, later immortalized in a film starring Humphrey Bogart. The character did not appear in many adventures by Hammett, but he survived long enough to make a lasting impression on the genre, and to serve as a template for crime fiction detectives to come.  With Spade, Hammett took the raw, brutal energy of Race Williams and added something of a classical cast to it.  Spade is a man of the streets, with a bitter and experienced wariness of life, yet he is nonetheless a man of decency and high ideals. This was a character who would be reinvented as Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s popular stories of the 1940s, and tailored even further; Marlowe, while as much of a tough man of the city streets as Spade, also takes pleasure in playing chess and reading poetry.

As seemingly lacking in literary substances as these detectives and stories were, there was clearly a component that resonated with the public, and which validated them as worthy elements within crime fiction. In both these heroes, there is a consistent blending of despair and commitment. Spade and Marlowe have no illusions, nor are they likely to fall for anyone’s ruse.  At the same time, they remain active in doing good, and in seeking justice. They are somewhat contemptuous of the law as well, and often work in opposition to it.   This was most exemplified in the third member of this crime fiction triumvirate, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer This disregard of proper form, however, only adds to the ethical base beneath them; it is as though they fight for codes and values deeper than those enforced by society.  It could be argued, also, that the America struggling to both emerge from the Great Depression and reconcile some form of civilized living with its increasingly congested, crime-filled cities needed just such heroes.

In this sense, and to its credit as a genre, American crime fiction of the twentieth century did exactly what popular art at its best is supposed to do: it both mirrored and influenced the society around it. Cynicism was valued as an asset because times were hard, and whole economic systems could suddenly break down. At the same time, there was an urgency to hold onto core values, in spite of hardship. In this way, the crime fiction of Hammett and Chandler was cathartic.  It gave the nation real heroes with whom to identify, men not especially pleased to go  about their business, but morally bound to so so anyway.   For these decades, crime fiction permitted readers to engage in a kind of non-romantic romanticism, and enter into worlds where there was much ugliness and vice, but where good would always triumph.

The Return to Traditions

It is interesting to note, in observing the trajectory of crime fiction, how England and America have long been in an “arms race”. As Poe in America produced the mysterious and erudite Dupin, Conan Doyle in the UK gave the world the more sleek, and far more dimensional and urbane, Sherlock Holmes. As the gritty writers of American crime fiction introduced the tough, no-nonsense Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Mike Hammer, Agatha Christie was bringing out a strange little Belgian and an old woman who would, again, redefine crime fiction.

Later on, P.D. James would bring everything full circle, with her invention of the detective Adam Dalgliesh.

In the 1920s, Hercule Poirot made his first appearance, in Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles.   This was, in a sense, Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin combined, with all the erudition of the former mixed in with the foreign quality of the latter. Eccentric, fastidious, independent, Poirot brought the realm of popular crime fiction back to drawing rooms and aristocratic circles, even as his American counterparts were pulling guns in pool halls. Then Christie took the form into a wholly unexpected terrain by introducing an elderly spinster, Jane Marple, as a premier sleuth, and this truly marks a marriage of high literary invention and popular crime drama. Poirot, as laden with quirks as he is, is still a type, and one familiar to readers; Jane Marple was something new and unexpected, and Christie added the stunning component of the detective’s own psychology in rendering her unique. That is to say, Miss Marple has no experience of the world at all.   She is able to penetrate into crime because she knows human nature, and she knows it so well simply because she has spent her life in a quiet, English village. With Miss Marple, crime fiction comes as near to real literature as it ever does, for this is crime as the consequence of disturbed psychology it must always be.

In modern times, the tradition continues with the work of P. D. James.  In 1962, she introduced to the world the character of detective Adam Dalgliesh, in the novel Cover Her Face, and a more modern, streamlined version of Sherlock Holmes would be hard to find. Dalgliesh is a poet, as well as a Scotland Yard investigator, and his intellectual leanings define him as do Holmes’ own sophisticated tastes. As crime fiction has evolved to suit the tastes of the current reading public, so too have its protagonists altered to reflect deeper levels of being.  Adam Dalgliesh, melancholy and fiercely intellectual, stands as a striking example of how real, multidimensional character may be developed within the often dismissed genre of crime fiction.

Conclusion

If the violent classics of past ages do not typically fall under the category of crime fiction, the genre has been marked, by itself, by a powerful current of vitality and change.  Forged and developed in both America and England, crime fiction has moved from cool, distanced analysis to rough, urban investigation and confrontation, and back again to sophisticated and complex stories of psychological motivations.  Crime fiction has always suffered under the label of being merely popular, but the reality is that some fine craftsmanship and probing writing have emerged from it.  Writers of any genre have the right to be judged by their best work, and each genre itself has that right.  This as understood, the inescapable fact remains that the history of crime fiction reveals an enormous range of story and talent.