The hard-boiled detective: personal relationships and the pursuit of redemption

Abstract

By start of the 1920s, the United States had seen nearly forty years of vast accumulations of wealth by a small group of people, substantial financial speculation and a mass change in the economic base from agricultural to industrial. All of this ended in 1929 in a crushing depression that spread not only across the country, but also around the world. Hard-Boiled detective fiction first reached the reading public early in the decade initially as adventure stories, but quickly became a way for authors to express the stresses these changes were causing on people and society. The detective is the center of the story with the task of reestablishing a certain degree of order or redemption. An important character hallmark of this genre is that he is seldom able to do this, or that the cost is so high a terrible burden remains. His decisions and judgments in this attempt are formed by his relationship with the people or community around him. The goal of this thesis is to look at the issues raised in the context of how the detective relates to a person or community in the story. For analysis, six books were chosen arranged from least level of personal relationship by the detective to the most intimate. The books are Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, The Galton Case, by Ross MacDonald, Cotton Comes to Harlem, by Chester Himes, Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley, and I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane. In the study of these books, a wide range of topics are presented including political ideologies, corruption, racial discrimination and family strife. Each book provided a wealth of views on these and other subjects that are as relevant today as when they were written.