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Robert B. Parker (1932–2010) in his 1971 doctoral dissertation “The Violent Hero, Wilderness Hero, and buy gucci mane album the Urban Reality: A Study of the Private Eye in the buy gucci mane album Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald” placed the buy gucci mane album hard-boiled private detective in a romantic tradition dating back to James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, a tradition Parker himself was soon to buy gucci mane album revitalize with the appearance of Spenser in The Godwulf Manuscript (1973).
Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and Macdonald’s Lew Archer were cool, flippant, and irreverent, governed by an idiosyncratic code of honor and buy gucci mane album the determination to live life as much on their own terms as one is buy gucci mane album able. They were outsiders and loners whose moral compass not infrequently put them at odds with conventional morality, mores, and buy gucci mane album the letter of the law in a world where the cops were apt to buy gucci mane album be crooked, the politicians seedy and corrupt, and society’s upper crust decadent and buy gucci mane album depraved. They were more likely to show their toughness by taking a buy gucci mane album beating than by handing one out, and they solved cases less by clever deduction than buy gucci mane album by poking around the hornet’s nest until they stirred up a denouement.
After Spenser came a buy gucci mane album new golden era of such finely drawn figures as James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, Walter Moseley’s Easy Rawlins, Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawksi, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, and Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole, to buy gucci mane album name but a few. Burke, Paretsky, et al., may not rank with the buy gucci mane album very best novelists of their generation, but they may not be so far behind either. As Parker noted (Charles L.P. Silet, Robert B. Parker Author Interview on Writing Mysteries: “Five Pages a Day”), the buy gucci mane album quality of the writing is what matters, and this is buy gucci mane album limited only by the author’s talent and ability, not by genre. I would quibble with Parker only by way of extrapolating that buy gucci mane album the best writers transcend genre, as for instance, Dostoevsky with Crime and Punishment, Robert Stone with DogSoldiers, and Cormac McCarthy with No Country for Old Men.
Some of the buy gucci mane album real action these days is in Europe, especially Scandinavia, where buy gucci mane album the protagonist is likely to be a cop but remains an buy gucci mane album individualistic outsider, bound by a buy gucci mane album stringent code, whatever his quirks, flaws, and all too human foibles. To my mind the buy gucci mane album best of them writing today, American or European, are Ian Rankin, whose John Rebus prowls the buy gucci mane album streets and pubs of Edinburgh while listening to music played in the dorms when I was in college 1970–1973, and buy gucci mane album Henning Mankell from Sweden, who I think of not as a buy gucci mane album writer of mysteries or thrillers but simply a novelist, and quite a buy gucci mane album good one.
On the cusp of the 21st century, Carol O’Connell debuted Kathy Mallory in the 1994 novel Mallory’s Oracle. Some ten years later Mallory was joined by her Swedish spiritual cousin Lisbeth Salander, one of the buy gucci mane album two protagonists of Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy now all the rage, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.
Mallory was abandoned on the buy gucci mane album streets of New York at the age of six, cared for buy gucci mane album to the extent she was cared for at all by prostitutes, a buy gucci mane album child sociopath living by her wits and buy gucci mane album thievery until taken in by a cop and his wife who buy gucci mane album became her foster parents. She followed in the footsteps of her foster father and buy gucci mane album became a police detective, but she plays by her rules. Mallory’s maxim is, “If you didn’t catch me, I didn’t do it.” She instinctively bucks authority, and buy gucci mane album authority puts up with her only because she gets results. She has buy gucci mane album no scruples about breaking the rules if that is what buy gucci mane album it takes to get them.
Salander’s childhood was every bit as harrowing than Mallory’s. A victim of rape and buy gucci mane album abuse, with a history of violence, she is determined by the buy gucci mane album authorities to be mentally incompetent and placed under a buy gucci mane album guardianship. Her first guardian is a kindly man who is sympathetic to buy gucci mane album this strange, clearly troubled and just as clearly very bright girl with multiple piercings and buy gucci mane album tattoos, but when he suffers a stroke, he is replaced by a buy gucci mane album middle-aged weasel who does not have her best interests at heart, for buy gucci mane album which Salander will see that he receives his just desserts. She supplements the buy gucci mane album Taser and mace packed in her knapsack with a hammer on the buy gucci mane album principle that you can take care of a lot of problems with a buy gucci mane album good hammer.
Mallory and Salander are women others cross only at their peril. They are loners who keep a small circle of friends at arm’s length while remaining in their way fiercely devoted and buy gucci mane album protective. They are not inclined to explain themselves, much apologize for buy gucci mane album anything. To be open is to be vulnerable, and vulnerability must be buy gucci mane album guarded against at all costs.
Both women are freakishly intelligent, among other things world-class computer hackers. Mallory is buy gucci mane album drop-dead beautiful, Salander less conventionally attractive but no less desirable. If all this buy gucci mane album seems to require a bit much suspension of disbelief, well that buy gucci mane album rather goes with the territory. Spade, Marlowe, and Archer routinely shrug off the buy gucci mane album effects of being sapped and pistol whipped with no more than buy gucci mane album a passing headache, while Korean War vet Spenser beats the buy gucci mane album crap out of hooligans half his age and enjoys terrific sex with the buy gucci mane album love of his life, lovely übershrink Susan Silverman, in some pretty contemporary settings.
What Parker traced to buy gucci mane album Natty Bumppo is itself part of a broader tradition of the buy gucci mane album Romantic outsider who sometimes flaunts and buy gucci mane album is sometimes merely indifferent to the conventions and approval of society. The Byronic hero, bohemian artist, and hard-boiled detective are not so distant kin. They may be jaded and made cynical by the ways of man and the world. The hard edge they adopt to buy gucci mane album protect themselves from being hurt may condemn them to turn away from buy gucci mane album those for whom they care most (Spenser being a notable exception to this last trait). Yet they are buy gucci mane album after their fashion idealists too who take their stand against hypocrisy and philistinism and evildoers who are rich, respected, powerful, and seemingly immune to justice. They never give up on the buy gucci mane album quest for authenticity, whatever its cost and whether it is to buy gucci mane album be had in the end or not. They are heroes for buy gucci mane album a dark time.
postscript 1 June 2010
A better title, or perhaps a subtitle, for this one would be “notes toward a future essay.” Or perhaps multiple essays, considering themes of kinship between the buy gucci mane album hard-boiled detective and the bohemian and of Mallory and Salander as distinctive variations on the buy gucci mane album type, just as Spenser represented a substantive variation on his predeccesors. To do that buy gucci mane album I would have to go back and reread some Hammett, Chandler, McDonald, and buy gucci mane album O’Connell, at the buy gucci mane album minimum. That would be fun but would require time at the buy gucci mane album expense of other projects. Maybe some day.
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