I’d like to begin with an important distinction—that is, novels about private eyes are optimistic no matter the body count. Noir fiction is the opposite; it has a body count that might even be grotesque by comparison but it is pessimism personified—even when the bad guys or girls get pummeled by the fate they deserved. Think of John Garfield’s final scene in The Postman Always Rings Twice before his character’s execution for murdering Cora’s husband, yet in a cruel twist of irony he’s convicted of murdering Cora, his partner in crime. Think of Fred MacMurray’s character in Double Indemnity, bleeding from a wound, detailing the sordid catastrophe of the murder of his lover’s husband into a Dictaphone, shot by his partner in crime.

Furthermore, there are so many private eyes in fiction that the mere task of classifying them would consume all the space I’m allotted for this essay. The private investigator novel is often, but not always, hardboiled. Noir fiction is never anything but. Wisecracking is almost a prerequisite since Raymond Chandler’s cynical loner Philip Marlowe appeared on the scene. Character sin noir are often humorless, desperate, rats in a sewer running for high ground. 

Gumshoes come in all shapes, both genders, and qualifying (or disqualifying) mental states and occupations. Think of the horde of brilliant eccentrics spawned by Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple as being slightly beyond the pale of this discussion, leaning more toward the “hardboiled” side of the fence than the “cozy.” No doubt, the latter’s characterizations continue to inspire contemporary private investigators abounding in the fictional field. Those who enjoy a reflective, crime-solving Nero Wolfe with his orchids have every bit as much right to the territory as those who prefer Spillane’s Mike Hammer kicking down a door and busting a bad guy in the mouth.  One can enjoy both kinds as in P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh or Ross Macdonald’s stern Lew Archer.

Many contemporary private investigators are humorless, some always seem sad like Matt Scudder or Dave Robicheaux, tempered by too much booze or a great loss in the past. Some are nothing but good-humored, and wise-cracking Gregory Macdonald’s Fletch and Kinky Friedman’s—well, Kinky Friedman. I still don’t know what to make out of Andrew Vaschss’ Burke or Ian Rankin’s Rebus.

This brings up the inevitable and well-worn cliché of the gumshoe’s essential cynicism, his or her worldview, or to borrow that wonderful German word for it, Weltanschauung, a word that incorporates more than worldview and contains a philosophy of humanity’s place in it. That is what brings me to the heart of my essay—the place where the finest hardboiled fiction and noir fiction overlap.

Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade bring justice to their worldviews. No need to bring up the “knight errant” motif here, although it certainly applies to every fictional detective working the mean streets to bring about a sense of equilibrium, which by the way is the classical definition of   what a tragedy is and what it should accomplish at the end—to restore an equilibrium to the world. A noirist’s worldview must stop short but it can leave that ideal of justice out there in the shadows for the reader to get the merest glimpse of it. Otherwise, as a certain classical commentator named Aristotle once said, would repulse us, the readers, to see innocence demolished or punished. That is abhorrent, unpalatable.

It’s destiny or fate (I won’t quibble the distinction here) that comes in to save the day.  The world of the noirist is unsentimental—keep your wise-cracking to yourself, thank you. It sees the world as it is with a point of view that is as close to a modern-day physicist’s as it’s possible for literature to get. Determinism, not free will; biological truth, not illusions of individual control;  chemistry and reptilian instinct overwhelm theology. It says this mortal world, as bad as it is, is enough. It’s all we have and it’s all we deserve. No room for the cozy here, obviously. No room for the reader who insists on having his mean streets and whitewashing, life-affirming delusions. It’s a heady wine for those who have the stomach for it. The near-beer of cozies is not palatable for those who want to see what their heart’s desire: the truth behind the veil.

For all Travis McGee’s beach-bumming, he glimpses it, too. I recall one novel, long forgotten, in which the roughneck (but sensitive) private investigator-on-call ponders apropos nothing going on in the novel a big, serious question: What exactly do all these screams, calls, cries, ejaculations, into in the void add up to? Then, of course, we resume the plotline, the bad guy’s comeuppance and Travis accepting his rightful half-share of good restored to the rightful owner.

Divorced, widowed, depressed, happy-go-lucky, adrift or affiliated with a business, an agency, a newspaper, or a small pawn shop in the Poconos, these p.i.’s are like us in their sensibilities and bad decisions. But the character in the noir mirror is someone we don’t like to see or gaze at too long. Both kinds are us and we need both. I write both noir and hardboiled. I’ve had my share of editors and publishers of crime-fiction websites reject my stories or novels manuscripts because the “protagonist is unlikeable.” I agree and submit elsewhere. There has to be a niche for writers and readers who doesn’t necessarily disdain the cozy crime-solver type but who need someone who bridges both philosophies. Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko and Lew Archer come as close to a meld of the two as possible. Lew says in The Drowning Pool (1950): “Night streets were my territory and would be till I rolled in the gutter.” 

Body Heat (1981), surely inspired by one or both of those classic 1940’s films mentioned in the beginning, typifies the best of noir in the betrayals, twists of fate, the amorality of the characters, the steep fall into disaster and ruin whether death row, imminent death, or prison, as in the case of Ned Racine, who encounters the most lethal, amoral femme fatale since Barbara Stanwyck’s portrayal in Double Indemnity. Ned puts it all together from his steamy prison cell where he’s been sent for the murder of his lover’s spouse. The last shot: Kathleen Turner’s character reclining on a sunny beach in an exotic locale, sipping a colorful drink. Her burdensome husband murdered, her money secured, the girlfriend who could have exposed her conveniently murdered, Ned Racine incarcerated, presumably for life. She’s home free.

We need, once in a while, a harsh reminder—a scouring of illusions, as someone once wrote of the playwright Edward Albee’s greatest talent, or we get too used to the amiable, eccentric, drunken, sad, wise, cynical, violent, ex-convict, ex-reporter, loner, family man, ex-lawyer bringing about a final justice that we never see in the world we inhabit. Film noir is the most intoxicating of Hollywood cocktails, to be sure, but I would argue that a written work of noir etches itself more deeply into the consciousness of a reader than a film ever can.

THE END