Hard-boiled detective fiction sets the scene for a cold and harsh reality. Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Girl with The Silver Eyes” is no exception to this rule. In this short story Hammett paints a picture of a brutally realistic urban center filled with characters that not many people would want to call friends. The realistic qualities of Hammett’s story are drawn from his own life’s experience working as a Pinkerton detective. The detective in “The Girl With The Silver Eyes” works for the Continental Detective Agency and is, therefore, known simply as the Continental Op. In the beginning of the story the Op professes, “a detective, if he is wise, takes pains to make and keep as many friends as possible among transfer company, express company and railroad employees” (27). This paper will examine this philosophy of the Continental Op, how he employs this approach to detective work and uncover if this approach is beneficial or disadvantageous.
The Continental Op is an unsympathetic character with a stickler attitude to his work. The Op believes that the case he is about to take is legitimate but states that, “I am only a hired man and have to go by the rules” (23). At the core of this statement is a man that is unwilling to bend the rules outlined by his company. People who always follow the rules are often seen as trust worthy and at the same time difficult to get along with. When you know a person is always going to go by the book, like the Op, it makes their actions predictably frustrating. Things could go a lot faster if a person were to cut a corner or two and help out. By doing this the detective might have made himself more likable to his new client. The Op shows no desire to perform this way to have friends on his side. T...
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... even if this means that he has to pay a few people to be his friends. Without the help of the girl at the Marquis Hotel the Op would not have been given that lead. If it were not for the help of Porky Grout over the past three years that the detective had employed him, who knows how many cases would have gone unsolved. Even though in the end things do not workout between Porky and the Continental Op and Porky meets his fate. It is clear that the Op’s philosophy about what it means to make and keep friends is different then what other people would describe. It is the strong moral code that the P.I. is constantly reinforcing that allows the case to come to a resolution. People may not like the Op and fortunately for the general public most people to not have the personality of the Continental Op. Fact is the detective solves the case and gets his women in the end.
Lester’s commitment to help Kathy at all costs undeniably alters the outcome of the novel. By providing her with money for a motel, and later with shelter at a friend’s cabin, he allows her to continue avoiding the reality of the situation. If Lester had never met Kathy, she would have been forced to be upfront with her lawyer. Instead, Kathy tells herself “there a limit to how much [her lawyer] wants to help,” and continues to tell Connie Walsh that she is staying with friends (88). Knowing the severity of Kathy’s plight could have prompted Connie Walsh to more ardently pursue the county on Kathy’s behalf. Because of Lester, however, the truth is kept from the lawyer.
In “Nevsky Prospect,” the third person narrator pulls double duty by describing two stories that parallel each other in time. After describing the seemingly harmless bustling avenue, mustaches, and clothing of Nevsky Prospect, the narrator happens to come upon two different characters: an artist and an officer. First, he follows the artist and right away, the narrator seems to be absorbed in the world of the artist. We see this occur when it is often hard to tell when the artist is dreaming or awake. The narrat...
Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, is a hard-boiled detective novel; a subset of the mystery genre. Before the appearance of this sub-genre, mystery novels were mainly dominated by unrealistic cases and detectives like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. As Malmgren states, “The murders in these stories are implausibly motivated, the plots completely artificial, and the characters pathetically two-dimensional, puppets and cardboard lovers, and paper mache villains and detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility.” (Malmgren, 371) On the other hand, Hammett tried to write realistic mystery fiction – the “hard-boiled” genre. In the Maltese Falcon, Hammett uses language, symbolism, and characterization to bring the story closer to reality.
The criminal underworld has been an essential aspect of crime fiction since the concept emerged in the mid-eighteenth century. While many authors have constructed their own idealistic conceptualizations of the criminal underworld, they have implemented distinct boundaries between the “good” and “evil” features of society. These opposing “worlds” often intertwine when the protagonist, a crusader for good, is thrust into the hellscape of society’s underworld. The novels A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson feature protagonists from differing backgrounds who embark on treacherous journeys through the criminal underworld.
In retelling the story of his friendships to Noble and his experience of death row, Earle does not outright makes his disagreement for the death penalty known. Earle informs the audience of the reasons why his friend shouldn’t be put to death, and the transformation he has made in the past twelve years. Earle recalls his story while he visits Noble in prison. Earle will be allowed to visit with Noble for six days spanning a two week time frame. These two friends are allowed to visit about past events and say their final goodbyes before the execution of
...wn?” And Goren responds, “That’s the thing, I am nothing like you and never will be.” And when Goren goes on to ask about the missing cocaine, the police officer continues to talk and says, “What you never paid informants by drugs to get the bigger fish!?” This implies that he skims off the top of the narcotic drugs that are brought in and takes the extra to bribe the informants to talk. At the end of it all, Goren is seen as a rat but he was the detective that actually used good ethical values to keep the community and people safe. While the other police officer uses corrupt and immoral choices to get what he wants, which in the end had someone killed.
Because police investigators are usually under pressure to arrest criminals and safeguard the community, they often make mistakes. Sometimes, detectives become convinced of a suspect 's guilt because of their criminal history or weak speculations. Once they are convinced, they are less likely to consider alternative possibilities. They overlook some important exculpatory evidence, make weak speculations and look only for links that connect a suspect to a crime, especially if the suspect has a previous criminal record. Picking Cotton provides an understanding of some common errors of the police investigation process. During Ronald Cottons interrogation, the detectives did not bother to record the conversation “But I noticed he wasn 't recording the conversation, so I felt that he could be writing anything down”(79) unlike they did for Jennifer. They had already labelled Ronald Cotton as the perpetrator and they told him during the interrogation “Cotton, Jennifer Thompson already identified you. We know it was you”(82). Jenifer Thompson 's testimony along with Ronald Cotton 's past criminal records gave the detectives more reason to believe Ronald committed the crime. Ronald Cotton stated “ This cop Sully, though, he had already decided I was guilty.”(84). Many investigative process have shortcomings and are breached because the officials in charge make
A detective story is a genre of fiction in which a person attempts to solve a crime. The detective may be a professional or an amateur, and generally has nothing to gain from solving the crime. However in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King”, the main character Oedipus is not only determined to solve a crime, but he is also in pursuit to find his own identity. This is similar to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” where Sherlock Holmes has been hired to work as a detective in return for monetary compensation. Both situations enable Oedipus and Sherlock to gain from unraveling the mysteries that sweep their towns hence making these stories different from most detective stories.
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict their own selves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified in the character of the prostitute. He constantly attempts to seek out revenge, but the concept of revenge, paired with the underground character’s actions and inertia, becomes problematic with the underground ideal. The underground character is steeped in contradiction, and how one interprets his actions, or his inactions, is what ultimately determines whether the he is, truly, an underground man.
Mysteries have always held great fascination for the human mind, not least because of the aura that surrounds them and the realm of the Unknown into which they delve. Coupled with the human propensity of being particularly curious about aspects which elude the average mind, the layer of intrigue that glosses over such puzzles makes for a heady combination of the literary and the popular. In the canon of detective fiction worldwide, no detective has tickled the curious reader’s imagination and held it in thrall as much as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The 221-B, Baker Street, London ‘amateur’ detective combines a rare blend of intellectual prowess and sharp wit to crack a series of baffling riddles.
Throughout the three selected short stories, the settings develop a suspenseful mood. In “The Pedestrian”, Mr. Mead is walking alone down the street, with no one else anywhere around; “To enter out into the silence that
It is very interesting to note how the conventions of 1940’s hardboiled private eye fiction translate into the 1970’s. The low-rent drabness of the genre loses much of its allure. The dark shadows and long nights of urban Los Angeles become the bright lights and warm sunshine of Malibu beaches. The detective’s normally snappy dialogue turns into joking asides. Marlowe’s hardboiled narration becomes the self-conscious mutterings of a lonely man talking to himself. The romantic myth of a man set apart from the city is turned on its head as a pathetic man living alone with his cat.
Compare and contrast the relationship of the detective to his or her community in Devil in a Blue Dress and Corollary In Walter Mosley’s “devil in a blue dress”, there is a clear cut distinction between the white and black man, this distinction is portrayed as something that is somewhat negative and looks at the situation from the eyes of a black man named Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins and how he is changed from a simple day to day laborer into an effective detective.
Amateur City, a city filled with confusion and intolerable human behavior. In this detective fiction novel, Katherine Forrest demonstrates the social, sexual and power dynamic of each character which all leads to the curious homicide of Fergus Parker. In Forrest’s Amateur City there are multiple analysis regarding the characters of the “Modern Office” also including the detective Kate Delafield. Amateur City portrays a huge hierarchy of the predominant human society in which the class of race, ethnicity and gender are all divided in the image of Forrest’s characters. The social, sexual and power dynamic of the “Modern Office” provides a powerful message in Forrest’s Amateur City, which clearly magnifies the realistic and true nature of humanity. This essay will stress upon the representive of Forrest’s characters relating to the modern world.
Dick presents our main character, Commissioner John Anderton, as the balding, pot-bellied founder of a revolutionary new crime detection system who's been showing his years for longer than he'd care to remember. In the short story, he has just acquired a new assistant, Ed Witwer, and fears being replaced by the younger man. In the beginning, Anderton is portrayed as slightly insecure about his job (to the point of near paranoia of being set-up), as well as his importance to society, though by the e...