At year’s end...

Last year, I got The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, edited by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler. It is a collection of mystery, crime, and detection short stories, the first of which was published in 1903, “A Retrieved Reformation” by O Henry, and ends in 1999 with Dennis Leane's “Running out of Dog”. It, of course, doesn't have any Doyle or Sherlock Holmes, but does have Glaspell's “A Jury of her Peers” and a short story by Dashiell Hammett, “The Gutting of Couffignal.” I was reading from this collection when I decided to blog about detective stories, even if I never blogged about anything I came across in this anthology (I was familiar with “Jury” well before I got this anthology).

However, as I bring this endeavor, which was originally just going to be about a few Sherlock Holmes stories, to a close, I want to move from The Maltese Falcon to my experience reading a few of the stories from this collection.

The first is Stephen Greenleaf's 1984 “Iris,” and it doesn't take long to tell this story wanders into some dark territory. It opens as a woman dumps a baby off on our protagonist detective and then drives away. At first, I thought it would be a story about the detective finding the real parents, but instead, he followed the woman – the eponymous Iris – and discovers what amounts to a small illegal kidnapping and adoption racket. It's darker than it sounds. When I read this story, with an ending Doyle would not have written, and that Hammett only might have, I felt like I had definitely hit a point where darkness reigned. I had seen this gradual darkening over the eighty years worth of fiction, but this one went places and did things I hadn't expected. I felt like I was in a place where there was no turning back.

So, braving whatever dark fiction awaited me, I turned to the next story, Sara Paretsky's “Three-Spot Po.” This story is about a murder mystery. And a heroic dog who braves the wintry weather and sea to bring his owner's murderer to justice. It's light, easy going, fun even. Sure, there's a murder, but the same darkness that permeated “Iris” just isn't there to raise the stakes and add a little horror to the situation. And this was also published in 1984.

And then, skipping a story and five years to 1989, there's “Too Many Crooks,” about two thieves who break into a bank while another band of thieves are taking everyone hostage. I laughed out loud while reading it. It's fun and far fetched, the entire story based on an absurd coincidence that juxtaposes two different types of criminals, all while being pretty funny.

My point in addressing these stories is because in moving from the Victorian Era and Sherlock Holmes just a few decades to Dashiell Hammett in Modernism is a massive shift and a loss of idealism to a harsh, post-war realism. However, this isn't to say that all the detective fiction that followed Hammett followed in that same cynical vein. The next major literary detective was Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a cynic to be sure, but he's easier to trust than Sam Spade, his stories a little more up beat, a bit more hope and light.

I say this in particular because I'm not sure what the future brings for me, personally. This year, I started a Literature PhD program. Suddenly, the time I took writing a few things about literature and composition are being taken up by in depth research, writing massive essays for seminar courses, preparing for presentations, etc.. My life has become so busy that I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this up or if it will be worthwhile. An idea that makes for a few good blog posts might be better suited for publication in a scholarly journal.

And so, I wrap up this year, pausing for December, and curious about what the next year will be.