Back in November, I reported on the Bouchercon session with Declan Hughes and John Connolly. They talked about the ten crime novels you have to read before you die. Well, here’s my take on the first three they mentioned. I like Hammett, I can’t stand Chandler, and I adore Macdonald.
Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald contributed to the development of crime fiction. They gave us that singular contribution to American literature, the private investigator or, in their language, the “private dick”. Private dicks are neither the cops nor the criminals. They are more likely to work with the former than tolerate the latter, even if some of their behavior can be a little shady.
The one consistent thing amongst all these authors was a theme of corruption. It’s more clear cut with Hammett and Chandler, but it’s still there, albeit more subtle, in Macdonald. In their crime novels, corruption runs deep. It involves booze, drugs, illicit sex, theft, lies, blackmail, assault, abuse of power, betrayal, perversion, and, ultimately, murder. These are all the things people will use or do when they are tainted and threatened.
One thing I think that gets overlooked when reading and studying these novels is the historical context out of which these men wrote. Chandler was the oldest of the three (b. 1888 in Chicago, IL). Neither he nor his near contemporary Hammett (b. 1894 St. Mary’s CO, MD) were college educated; Chandler had an excellent public school education in England while Hammett left school at thirteen. Both men were veterans of World War I and the Jazz Age.
The booze-fueled Jazz Age wasn’t a barrel of laughs. The economics were unstable and repressive--as Hammett could’ve told anybody. He was a Pinkerton veteran of union-bashing; between that and the war, Hammett had had a close up view of real violence. Chandler and Hammett were full formed, grown men when the Depression crashed down upon the world.
Ross Macdonald (b. 1915 in Los Gatos, CA as Kenneth Millar) came of age during the Depression. Like Chandler, he was raised outside of the US and was abandoned by an alcoholic father. But he was a veteran of World War II, a different war with a different agenda. Psychology, new even at the outbreak of WWI, had taken a permanent hold in post WWII consciousness. Furthermore, Macdonald obtained a Ph.D. in literature. Character motivations based in a clear psychological understanding and true tragedy mark his work.
One doesn’t see refinement and education from either of Hammett’s protagonists in RED HARVEST (1929) or THE MALTESE FALCON (1930). Both the Continental Op and Sam Spade are hard-nosed men who know how the world works in messy, practical way. Moral codes are fine things, but insubstantial in the face of survival and doing what they’ve been hired to do. They get paid to do a job, and violence is frequently part of that job. Violence isn’t a plot point. It’s a nasty reality with terrible consequences.
RED HARVEST, I see as “private eye procedural”. Like police procedurals, this novel has a procedure and hierarchy to follow, but, at the same time, the Op has to go rogue. Boy, howdy, does the Op goes rogue (twenty-two bodies by my count). MALTESE FALCON is the classic PI novel. Spade takes a client for retainer and expenses, but he’s a rogue--a charming one, but a rogue for all of that.
Hammett knew how to craft a novel that told a story with engaging characters and with snappy dialogue that both revealed character and propelled the story. He had something to say, too. His protagonists set up confrontations, these conflicts elicit as much truth as can be found and/or is needed, and the corruption is exposed and excised.
RED HARVEST deals with systemic corruption; the system is broken and needs to be replaced. The Continental Op gives the town of Poisonville the enema it so richly needs and deserves. A red harvest indeed! THE MALTESE FALCON addresses personal corruption through the sin of avarice, the second deadly sin. Spade reveals that what the crew of villains have been pursuing and turning on each other over isn’t what they think it is. It definitely, deliciously isn’t worth the murder or the expense that’s been committed to obtain.
The bottom lines in Hammett’s moral universe--everybody lies and ain’t nobody too right.
God knows Raymond Chandler didn’t like corruption. He rails against it in THE LONG GOOD-BYE (1953).
Chandler takes aim at the cops. Their power corrupts them. They use violence instead of brains and observation to get what they want (rather like a Chandler plot). They will always take the easy way. The one good cop in here, Bernie Ohls, either gives something of a lie to that theory or proves the rule by exception.
Chandler takes aim at the rich. There’s no way to get rich without resorting to sharp practices, so there’s little difference between Harlan Potter, businessman, and Mendy Menendez, gangster. The idle rich are the worst of all--drunken, bored, sex-crazed parasites.
Chandler takes aim at overblown, washed-up writers who are popular but drunk and at their scum-sucking publishers who are only interested in the next book. Gee, Ray, a shot at yourself?
Unfortunately, these shots at the cops, the rich, and even the publishing industry are more achingly true today.
Chandler couldn’t plot for sour apples. Whereas Hammett’s narratives move along as the protagonists learn more from their confrontations, Chandler’s plot comes to a screeching halt when one side in a confrontation refuses to engage. As a moral, it’s great--sometimes, the only winning move IS not to play. As a plot device, it stinks. When this happens, Chandler generally resorts to violence. Marlowe gets beaten up. Violence as merely a plot device simply cheapens the violence and eliminates its ability to corrupt.
Marlowe is not a great protagonist, even if he’s got a moral code, has more intellect, and has some existential verve. His behavior at the hands of that stellar bunch of cops, the LAPD, proves he’s a stand-up guy and won’t grass a mate. In his business, that’s important. He doesn’t want to get paid for certain jobs that he doesn’t like, yet he ends up doing the jobs anyway? Get real. A private dick is in business to make money, not get taken to the cleaners.
Furthermore, Marlowe spends too much time talking and posturing. Instead of doing things, like Spade or the Op, too many things happen to Marlowe. He’s not in charge of his own life, let alone his investigation, risible as it is.
In THE CHILL, Lew Archer isn’t an existential poseur like Marlowe, isn’t as shady, cynical, or manipulative as Sam Spade, and isn’t as ruthless and bloody-minded as the Continental Op. He’s more believable, in a literary sense, because he is more human. In many respects, he’s more like Aeneas--the flawed, even guilty hero who does his duty.
The people who inhabit this novel are more human, too, than in the other stories. As much Macdonald drew on literature, he used his own personal, knowledge of alcoholism and abandonment to craft vulnerable haunted adults and their jealous, hate-filled relatives and lovers.
In THE CHILL, Alex Kincaid hires Archer to find his runaway bride, Dolly. Archer doesn’t work for free, he needs to make a living, and he pays other dicks for their time and work when he needs their help. He gains legitimacy to continue the case by finding a lawyer for Dolly when things get ugly. PIs frequently work for lawyers; they provide the alternative investigation to build a defense. The corrupt and idiotic cops (by this time a cliché!) decide to make her the main suspect in a murder. With a subtle, empathetic understanding of people, Archer follows the evidence to solve a case that involves three murders, two twenty plus years before the third.
Because Macdonald deals in the corruption of the spirit, of the emotional life, THE CHILL arrives at Greek tragedy. It is the passions of the characters that drive the choices that are made. Those decisions create inexorable forces that neither perpetrators nor victims can escape. Macdonald’s use of spare, even bleak, language and his ability to keep Archer and the reader on the same page with the same amount of information made the tragedy all the more real.
My friend Rich claims “Sophoclean underpinnings” for this novel, but I would argue for Euripides. Neither Greek tragedian allowed his characters to escape their fates, their own personally created hells, but Euripides, as Sophocles himself allegedly said, made men (and women) as they are, not as they should be. He made people explicable and sympathetic, even when they were murderous. Think MEDEA.
I like Hammett for pulling the parlor rug out from under murder. It’s not a bloodless drawing room game. I love Macdonald for rendering it the tragedy that it is. He exposes the suffering and the hatred that drive a murder. Neither author attempts to return to the status quo ante. There can be no return, and they knew it. As for Chandler, well, if you like reading self-indulgence, go for it. I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.