Susanna Lee’s Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History starts with Carroll John Daly’s “The False Burton Combs,” first published in 1922 in Black Mask and moves on to Daly’s next story Black Mask story, “Three-Gun Terry,” featuring Terry Mack, a detective. But it was the 1923 story, “Knight of the Open Palm,” that introduced the world to Race Williams and true hard-boiled detectives.
Less hard-boiled but just as tough as Race Williams was Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op. Black Mask launched the first installment of Red Harvest in it’s November 1927 issue. A few years later, Raymond Chandler’s short stories appeared and found their way into book form like The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), High Window (1942), The Lady in the Lake (1943), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953).
Susanna Lee explores the long career of Mickey Spillane starting with I, the Jury (1947), My Gun is Quick (1950), Vengeance Is Mine (1950), One Lonely Night (1951), The Big Kill (1951), and Kiss Me, Deadly (1952). Mike Hammer is the quintessential hard-boiled detective who shoots first and asks questions later.
Things became a bit more complicated (and more sophisticated) when Ross Macdonald and Robert Parker showed up with their more modern detectives. Lee writes about TV detectives–James Rockford and Harry O–but ignores the dozens of series detectives that filled the airwaves in the 1960s and 1970s. My only quibble about Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History is that many paperback detectives–Mike Shayne, Shell Scott, Johnny Liddell–are left out of this book. Maybe they’ll show up in the sequel. Who’s your favorite detective? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. A Silhouette 1
Chapter One. Arriving on the Scene 11
Chapter Two. A Moral Compass 51
Chapter Three. A Rugged Individual 85
Chapter Four. A Lone Wolf 123
Chapter Five. A Person of Honor 149
Appendix: Selected Authors’ Fictional Works 169
Notes 183
Bibliography 199
Index 209
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is my favorite. Lew Archer (Ross MacDonald second). I find Robert Parker overrated. I am also fond of detectives created by Joseph Hansen, Arthur Lyons. Jonathan Valin, Michaell Lewin, Max Allan Collins and Sue Grafton among others. Not a fan of Mike Hammer. He was just too poorly written.
I read a few of Raymond Chandler’s books – got them from our America House, free rent as a student. Don’t remember the others.
But I have to admit that I was fascinated by Mike Hammer and his stories of what’s going on in New York – looked crazy for me though.
Even bought some other stories by Mickey Spillane where policemen are telling their stories, forgot the names though.
Just remembered:
The Deep with its surprising ending
Wolf, and I, THE JURY with its famous last line.
Of course, Wolf, Mike Hammer stories were, and remain, crazy.
Steve, at one time Mickey Spillane’s books were the best selling novels in the world. I’m with you on Grafton, Hansen, Lyons, Valin, Lewin, and Collins. Let’s not forget Bill Pronzini, either.
I’d agree with nearly all of the ones Steve mentioned, although I’ll confess that I’ve never read Sue Grafton, certainly an astonishing lapse on my part. I’d add Stephen Greenleaf’s John Marshall Tanner, who resembles Archer more than Marlowe. Robert Parker does present problems. Those first 10-12 Spenser novels are just great, but the series fell off a cliff after that. The private eye seems to have fallen from favor. Where are they today? I’m currently reading Jeff Parker’s “Then She Vanished”, the fourth novel in his Roland Ford series. Ford isn’t exactly a “classic” PI, but the books are pretty good. Maybe I’m just missing them, but who’s writing good PI novels today?
Michael, I need to dig out my Stephen Greenleaf/John Marshall Tanner books. I liked the early Robert Parker books and stopped reading after about 10 books. Characters like Jack Reacher seem to have supplanted the Private Eye.
I forgot Stephen Greenleaf, another favorite. Matt Goldman has a fairly recent series which is pretty good and Earl Emerson and G.M. Ford.
Steve, Maggie Mason is a big Earl Emerson fan.
Matt Goldman is.
Jim Rockford, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, Tess Monaghan, Jane Tennyson, Morse. And so many more.
Patti, I had a feeling you were a Jim Rockford fan.
My mother’s nearly lifelong media crush on James Garner made sure I was seeing at least some of NICHOLLS (as much a predecessor of Rockford as anything) and THE ROCKFORD FILES. The former started my early media crush on Margot Kidder, and wasn’t too shabby a series, nor of course was THE ROCKFORD FILES…though why either protagonist would hang around with Stuart Margolin’s characters for more than five minutes, even if favors owed, never was sufficiently clear to me except as plot-drivers.
Todd, I think women “of a certain age” were all smitten with James Garner. I first watched him in MAVERICK and followed his career until the end.
Presumably MAVERICK and the early films hooked my mother. That he was an amateur auto-racer perhaps didn’t hurt…so was my father, and she (in cross-country races in Alaska) was his navigator.
Todd, my mother was won over by James Garner’s smile and humor.
I’m pretty sure I wrote former, but might’ve misspelled it.
Todd, I fixed it for you.
Thanks!
I’m not sure I’ll agree that Robert Parker was ever more sophisticated or complicated a novelist than Hammett. Spillane, of course, was Carroll John Daly with sex (they both dug the sadism) and a slightly less clumsy prose style…Spillane acknowledged his debt to and inspiration by Daly. I wonder if John D. MacDonald ever overtook Spillane in aggregate sales, given how vastly popular he became and how much more prolific he was (and how much better).
I certainly don’t forget Bill Pronzini, nor Marcia Muller (seems like relatively few want to rank her with Grafton and Sara Paretsky, but it probably helps that I first read her Sharon McCone series with TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS, which in its not quite dispassionate way says important things about life, aging, doing one’s best against ridiculous odds and more…not quite wistful, not quite bitter, but determined). Have you ever considered how Norman Saylor, Fritz Leiber’s protagonist and stand-in CONJURE WIFE and the short story “Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee” (hiding one’s rudeness in plain sight in titling), is a sort of amateur detective with A Whole Lot of skin in the game in both cases? Leiber’s occasional more blatant crime fiction less powerful, but worth reading.
Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, where Archie is a mildly hardboiled character vs. Wolfe’s usually more drawing-room sort (but you wouldn’t want to tackle either in a dark alley), the elderly Holmes of Michael Chabon’s THE FINAL SOLUTION, Earliest favorite was Donald Sobol’s Dr. Haledjian, who was a bit more hardboiled than Enclyclopedia Brown…
And since I brought in blatant fantasy/horror elements above, I might as well add Ron Goulart’s Max Kearney, Manly Wade Wellman’s John, and to some extent Edward Hoch’s Simon Ark…though “The Oblong Room”, which could’ve been an Ark story, remains the best single story I’ve read by Hoch.
Todd, I need to read some more of Ron Goulart’s Max Kearney.
Wow!
I really enjoyed the SF of Ron Goulart, didn’t realize that he has written so much in other fields as wiki shows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Goulart
Is this a history and analysis, or are there short stories?
Rick, DETECTIVES IN THE SHADOWS is a literary history. No short stories (although dozens are referred to).
No John D. MacDonald? No Nameless? As far as I’m concerned, a single paragraph on Spillane would be sufficient. I read I, THE JURY and that was enough.
Yes to Greenleaf, and Grafton, though I only read A through H. I like the P.I. sub genre but it is harder to find these days.
Rick, I was sorry some of the hard-boiled detectives from paperbacks didn’t make the cut for this book.
Though Johnny Liddell was featured heavily in magazines, too, for a while. Of course, SHAYNE and briefly SCOTT had their own Renown magazines.
Todd, Johnny Liddell became a favorite of mine when I was a teenager in the Sixties. I really liked the titles of Kane’s books, too.
Mike Shayne was my favourite as he was one of the first ones I read in my father’s paperbacks. I mentioned before that while growing up in northern Manitoba we had few book choices with no library or bookstore. The local tobacco store sold paperbacks and I remember Geroge Harmon Coxe’s Kent Murdock and A.A. Fair’s Cool and Lam. I still have some of my father’s Shayne books and since then completed the set. I also have most of John D. MacDonald’s books in my collection.
Kent, I read all the Mike Shayne paperbacks published in the Sixties. I picked up a few in the Seventies that still are waiting to be read. And how about those surprising Dallas Stars!!!
Continental Op, Nameless, The DKA ops (Joe Gores), Truman Smith (Bill Crider), Lew Archer.
Frankly, this sounds like some kid’s term paper that leaves out more than it puts in. No interest.
Bob, Susanna Lee basically focused on Big Name writers.
Enjoyed the responses the post got, George. My favourite detective has to be Philip Marlowe. There’s just something about him. On screen, my fave PI is Gay Perry in the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2004) based on Brett Halliday’s book “Bodies are where you find them”. Val Kilmer simply steals the show.
neeru, I’m going to have to rewatch KISS KISS BANG BANG. Thanks for the memory jogger!
KISS KISS BANG BANG isn’t stolen by anyone, by me…though Michelle Monaghan both gives an excellent performance and is very easy to watch otherwise, to say the least. Probably Shane Black’s best film.