The Private investigator The hard-boiled private investigator novel was born 100 years ago at a time when America had just escaped from the flu pandemic and was grappling with prohibition. The likes of Sherlock Holmes just wouldn’t cut it anymore. Readers wanted a more cynical type of fiction. And thus, the P. I. novel in its modern form came about. (BTW, as many of you know, I was a private investigator in a past life.) I thought today I’d list my five favorites, a list that shows the development of the form. 1. We have to begin with the granddaddy of them all, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, staring Sam Spade. It’s a classic. The plot involves a San Francisco P. I., Spade, who gets involved in a hunt for a priceless jewel-encrusted statuette after his partner is murdered. The story involves Joel Cairo, of course, the man played by Peter Lorre in the film. The novel is famous for its cynical tone and morally ambiguous characters. (BTW, when it was filmed, Humphrey Bogart, who played Sam Spade, famously was quoted as saying he became lost in its complexity.) 2. This is a ringer. I should be talking about Farwell My Lovely but instead I’m going to place here The Last Good Kiss, a novel by James Crumley that you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a neo-noir story involving an alcoholic veteran, C. W. Sughrue, who also works at a topless bar. He has to find a missing girl while also tracking down a derelict author. It’s gritty and cynical and exposes the dark side of America at the end of the Vietnam War. 3. And so, Farewell My Lovely. It’s the second of Raymond Chandler’s novels featuring Philip Marlowe and by far the best. Marlowe is investigating a missing persons case when he also comes upon the murder. He ends up advising a police detective for Bay City (standing in for Santa Monica, CA) who has little interest in the case: it involves the murder of a Black man, after all. It’s cynical and hard-bitten and terrific. 4. This is another ringer: Devil in a Blue Dress, a novel – excellently hard-boiled – featuring Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins, a Black man who transforms from a day laborer into a private detective. It’s set in 1948 and begins in the Watts area of Los Angeles where Easy is sitting in a bar drinking when a man named DeWitt Albright walks in and offers him a job finding a White woman who hangs out in bars frequented by African-Americans. 5. And finally, another novel by a person you probably aren’t familiar with, Dolores Hitchens. It’s called Sleep with Slander and features a private investigator, Jim Sader, (who’s also an alcoholic, or maybe an ex-alcoholic) who has to find a kidnapped young boy. In the process he falls into a labyrinth of family secrets. It’s probably the best hard-boiled novel by a woman, if I can be briefly sexist, but it’s terrific regardless: "You're playing with a child's life.” ** I have pretty much refrained from overt political opinion up to this point, but I have to break the vow now. Our president – and I don’t say this lightly – is a moron. (To quote his first secretary of state.) The self-dealing, the stupid war, the sleepiness, the incoherent speech, the re-making of Washington, the golden statues, the golden office, the non-caring attitude about rising prices, the ‘revenge’ actions, the weaponization of the DOJ, DOGE, the countless doctor visits without explanation, the enrichment of family and friends and sycophants, non-concern about outrageous ticket prices, the stolen election claims, likening himself to Jesus (!), his best buddy Putin … I could go on and on… As a thank you for following my writing journey, here's an excerpt from a new short story I'm working on.
