On a list of my favourite luxuries, listening to detective
stories would come pretty high. Intricate plotting, puzzling details which are
all smoothed out at the end, broadbrush and bold
characterisation — the flirt, the unhappy lover, the observant housemaid — and an
action-centred story with little introspective agonising. And on top of that,
characterful, endearing, quirky detectives. Here are my favourites.
My top six detectives
In no particular order:
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| Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey |
1. Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’s tweedy sleuth, as portrayed by Ian Carmichael in the BBC Radio 4 series. His dropped gs (havin’, goin’ to) and question tag ‘ain’t it?’ are an endearing part of his upper-class speech. His faithful, stolid, literal-minded manservant Bunter provides the crucial assistance in untangling intricately plotted, usually rural, crimes.
2. Mma Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, in Alexander McCall Smith’s series of novels. She initially employs a
secretary, Mma Makutsi (proud recipient of 97% in the Botswana College of
Secretarial and Office Skills), not because she has enough work (she doesn’t),
but because no self-respecting detective can work without a secretary.
Motivation for crimes runs deep and moral choices must be made by the two
ladies. For example, should a client be told about his wife being adulterous with
a richer man if spilling the beans would mean his son would be deprived of an
expensive education?
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| John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot |
3. ‘Hastings! Hastings! I have been blind!’ exclaims Hercule Poirot to his friend on finally seeing how the details fall into place. The vain Belgian who can solve everything with his ‘little grey cells’ is portrayed memorably by John Moffatt on BBC Radio 4 or of course by David Suchet in the TV series – the latter worth it for the costumes and lavish art deco clothes and interiors alone.
4. Sherlock Holmes. The prototype, with his solitary musings
and slow, often clumsy sidekick Dr Watson, the proxy for the thick audience
(us) as we need matters explained simply. My favourite story? 'The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist', for its plucky young woman who comes to Holmes because she wants to know why she is being stalked by a man on two wheels on her way to and
from a job in an out-of-the-way spot. On examining the shape of her fingers, Holmes almost
decides she is a typist, but then realises she is a musician because ‘there is
a spirituality about the face… which the typewriter does not generate’.
5. V I Warshawski, in Sara Paretsky’s series. Radically
left-wing Vic’s jobs usually involve uncovering murky doings by big business
and defending the marginalised, such as victims of big pharma, or those who
need to use her friend Lottie Herschel’s abortion clinic. Kathleen Turner and
Sharon Gless portray her memorably on the BBC Radio 4 series.
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| The Penguin edition of The Big Sleep |
6. Philip Marlowe. Wild behaviour and wild plots at the hard-bitten end of Los Angeles society where no one gives anything for free. The hard-drinking sleuth turns up in his car to poke innumerable hornets’ nests and see if the response will help him resolve matters for clients who are often themselves hiding things from him. Great sardonic lines, e.g. ‘my face was stiff with thought. Or something else my face was stiff with.’
What do they have in
common?
Some curious common themes emerge:
- All but one (Mma Ramotswe) have relationships with local
police, seeking help when they need to, keeping them at arms’ length if they
can, sharing information when they must. Warshawski and Marlowe almost end up
in prison themselves on various occasions.
-All except Marlowe and
Warshawski have dependable, though limited, assistants.
-Transport is important – cars feature heavily in stories
about Marlowe and Warshawski. And let’s not forget Mma Ramotswe’s little white
van, always on the verge of giving up, and the trains and horse-drawn carriages
in the Conan Doyle stories. The detective must be able to travel easily and
quickly to far-flung places and crime scenes.
-The detectives are all, apart from Mma Ramotswe and Lord
Peter Wimsey perhaps, eccentric to various degrees. They could even be called
outsiders, though they want to do good in society (why else solve crimes?) and
are themselves regarded with various degrees of affection (though there’s not
usually much love lost between Marlowe and the local police). Perhaps being an observer
means being somewhat of an outsider.
-All except Wimsey (whose wife is crime novelist Harriet
Vane – they have to solve a crime on their honeymoon) and Mme Ramotswe (married
to the kindly mechanic Mr J. L. B. Maketoni) are single.
A critic speaks
Literary critic Walter Ong, in his charting of the movement
from oral to literate societies, cited modern detective stories as the example par excellence of narrative in literate
culture. Narrative in purely oral societies had necessarily been full of
repetitions so the audience could keep on track, and was episodic rather than
tightly plotted. But in a detective story ‘ascending action builds relentlessly
to all but unbearable tension, the climactic recognition and reversal releases
the tension with explosive suddenness, and the dénouement disentangles everything
totally’. This thorough, intricate plotting is possible partly because the
reader can notice intricate clues, turn the pages forward and backwards, check details,
all of these impossible if one depends on listening to a story.
The joy of audio
Yet I often enjoy listening to, rather than reading,
detective stories. I may not be able to keep abreast of all the clues, but
enjoy the feeling of being swept along in a story which will come right in the
end – the delight of observing a charismatic maestro or maestra who finds their
way through a thicket of puzzling and contradictory detail. Mon ami! Let me
tell you how it happened…
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