33 Ideas for Papers/Discussions
on Detective Fiction
Classic Writers
Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar)
Development of Hard-Boiled Narrative
Early Female Authors of Hard-Boiled Writing
Chester Himes and Early Afro-American Detectives
Major Works
Red Harvest (1927) by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
The Glass Key (1931) by Dashiell Hammett
The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
The Galton Case (1959) by Ross Macdonald
The Underground Man (1971) by Ross Macdonald
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) by Chester Himes
Characteristics of the Genre
Imagery in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction
Criticism, 1930 to the Present
Detective Fiction in Comics, Radio, and Television
Film Noir
Reactions against Early Crime Movies
More Film Noir (brief takes on The Glass Key (1942), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Big Sleep (1946), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, 1981), The Lady in the Lake (1947), The Lady From Shanghai (1949), Criss Cross (1949), D.O.A. ((1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), Chinatown (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Body Heat (1981), and The Ususual Suspects (1995).
1. In the 1870s dime novels were blamed for crimes in several sensational court cases in Boston and New York City. Can you identify similar situations in our time? They may involve films, as well as novels. To what extent have courts ruled that narratives about crime can "cause" crime?
2. In what ways is the gothic novel (for example The Castle of Otranto or Frankenstein) related to writing about crime and criminals?
3. Find the works of Vidocq in your library and read in them. How does his writing differ from that of modern writers on crime?
4. Poe invented the technique of using newspapers to provide clues and to introduce action into the detective story. What subsequent writers used it, and how?
5. Poe believed that unity of impression was key to the detective tale. Yet modern detective novels are too long to finish in one sitting. How do modern novelists preserve their "effects" even though readers dip into the stories over days at a time?
6. Hard boiled writer James M. Cain wrote an essay about the influence of Frank Merriwell on him for the Saturday Evening Post, June 11, 1927. Read it and report on what he found in the older generation of pulp heroes.
7. Read a Race Williams novel by Carroll John Daley and a Mike Hammer novel by Mickey Spillane. Compare and contrast these two heroes.
8. What significant events were occurring in American cities during the period when pulp detective magazines were becoming popular? Do you see any relation between these urban events and the growth of magazine readership?
9. Frederick Nebel and some other hard-boiled writers also succeeded in writing romance fiction for popular magazines. Do you see any common denominators in the two genres? How do you think they could switch back and forth? You may wish to consult a book on the features of the gothic novel.
10. Read Paul Cain's Fast One and Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key. Which one is the harder-boiled? What are your standards of comparison?
11. Discussing the merits of early hard-boiled heroes, critics used the term "brittle" to designate heroes and styles that were excessive. Find some passages that you think might quality for this term. What qualities make them "over the top"? Is there anything in them that indicates a hardness that is also precarious or fragile? Especially during the Depression , it was popular to portray male heroes whose psyches were only tenuously held- together as they coped valiantly with overwhelming difficulties as "brittle."
12. Compare and contrast the amount and kind of formal education received by the major writers in the genre (see the History, Hammett, Cain, and Chandler sections).
13. The major writers wrote about regions that they did not grow up in, indeed discovered only as adults. Compare their regions of origin and those they used as fictional settings -- can you see any reasons why so many of them settled on California as a setting?
14. Describe the world of Mike Hammer by detailing the things that he uses (cars, cigarettes, alcohol), the settings in which he is seen (offices, bars, etc) and characters with whom he associates. Does he ever see a movie, read a book, listen to music? Be as specific as possible. Is Hammer is a materialist? Is there a value system to his materialism? Use his anti-Communism (which means anti-materialism) as a sounding board for your analysis.
15. What are the two types of women portrayed by Mickey Spillane in his novels? Is there evidence for the claim that his sequences of sex and violence are stylized enactments of rape?
16. Jim Thompson and James M. Cain develop similar characters by dissimilar means. Both often use first person narrators. What differs in the techniques of their characterization?
17. Joseph Wambaugh has cited Joseph Heller (Catch 22) as a major influence on his novel The Choirboys. Compare the events that lead Heller's Yossarian to feign insanity to the events that propel Wambaugh's characters to their "choir practice." Does Wambaugh employ any clear paradigm, such as the "catch," by which reason is always inverted?
18. Dialogue is one of the distinguishing marks of the hard-boiled novel. Trace the development of dialogue from Hammett through Chandler to Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins. How does the speech given to the protagonist change? Is more or less vernacular diction used?
19. Critics say that Leonard's Maximum Bob (1991) "reverses" the usual crime novel formula, because the crime doesn't occur at the beginning. Trace the events and see if this is true. Do other elements of the novel proceed in customary fashion?
20. Do the novelists with personal experience in the world of crime -- Hammett, Gardner, Wambaugh, Higgins (and perhaps Ellroy) -- present it differently than the writers without such resources?
21. Ross Macdonald, Robert B. Parker, and Sarah Paretsky hold Ph.D.s in English or History. Do their works seem more "literary" when you read them? If so, what features make their work seem that way - diction? Allusions? Be specific.
22. Sara Paretsky and other female hard-boiled authors say they are trying to create role models for women in their protagonists. In what respects does V. I. Warshawski fulfill this mission?
23. Compare and contrast Hammett's Sam Spade and Ned Beaumont. In what ways is Beaumont tougher than Spade?
24. Collect a number of James M. Cain's metaphors from The Postman Always Rings Twice. Do they illuminate a real world of lived experience or do they refer to a fantasy world? What common qualities do they share?
25. Compare the romantic triangles in The Maltese Falcon and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Why doesn't the femme fatale ever kill anyone herself?
26. Walter Huff of Double Indemnity seems far more evil than Sam Spade. He kills an innocent man. But in his daily life Huff practices many of the same economies that Spade does. To what degree are their actions self-preserving in a way that American society endorses?
27. Compare and contrast the romantic triangles involving Sam Spade and Ned Beaumont. How do the differing male/female compositions affect the plots?
28. - Compare and contrast Frank Chambers from The Postman Always Rings Twice and Walter Huff from Double Indemnity.
29. How does Brigid O'Shaughnessy of The Maltese Falcon differ from the "pure" archetype of the femme fatale?
30. Read James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce. Then write an essay comparing and contrasting Mildred and Cora of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Note that Cora, like Mildred, believes strongly in hard work and saving.
31. James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity are told by first person narrators, who "confess" to the reader. Where in these novels is the reader directly addressed? Are there occasions when the narrator refers to events he presumes the reader knows about? Are those occasions particularly important? Discuss this technique in relation to "voice over" in Film. See the work on Janey Place on this topic.
32. Are there "beautiful" women in the novels of feminist hard-boiled authors Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton? Are they treated positively or negatively? What characteristics of the femme fatale do they embody?
33. What are the stereotypes about the rich that you have found in your reading of hard-boiled fiction? Are the rich ever treated positively?