Spade Spawn

             The government is claiming plans to disclose all the secret information they’ve been storing for decades on UFOs (rebranded UAPs, for some inscrutable reason).  So far, all we’ve seen are a bunch of fuzzy black and white images I could have concocted as a teenager in my backyard.  They say there’s more to come, but I’m betting it’s the best they’ve got. 

I find the idea of intelligent alien life pretty interesting, though I’m more in Stephen Hawking’s camp when it comes to actually encountering any of them.  He argued,

convincingly for me, that it would be a bit like the indigenous Americans’ experience with Europeans.  Not so great.  (I refer you to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes titled, How To Serve Man.)

            

            My abiding interest in detective fiction didn’t really take off until I was in graduate school and discovered Dashiell Hammett.  Then Chandler, then MacDonald, and so on.  Before that, my first love was science fiction, which I devoured at such a rate I almost ran out of books.  As with crime writing, there are dozens of science fiction sub-genres, some of which borrow heavily from, well, crime writing.  My favorite movie is still Blade Runner, which in nearly every respect is hardboiled detective noir with synthetic humans filling in for the Maltese Falcon. (I saw it as a double feature with Outland, which is basically High Noon in space.) 

                    

            Phillip K. Dick’s novella on which Blade Runner was based doesn’t bear much resemblance to the movie.  All of Dick’s work was pretty exceptional, but the film  

was better because Ridley Scott infused it with every noir trope in the Dashiell Hammett/Humphrey Bogart instruction manual.  I even prefer the narration version the studio foisted on Scott and Harrison Ford.  Ford was so furious about it he said he recorded the monologue in the flattest, most uninflected voice he could manage.  It was just the right choice.  

            One reason English is such a successful language is it promiscuously embraces every other language it encounters, living or dead, swallowing up words and usages without shame or compunction.  Crime fiction operates the same way.  It’s the natural host for every other genre, the universal solvent that absorbs every literary style or subject matter, obsession or pretension.  The only qualifier is that these stories must have stakes, consequences and moral dilemmas.  These indispensable elements are the price of admission.  In return, every other genre partakes freely of crime writing conventions, often so seamlessly hardly anyone notices.

            

        I wrote a standalone novel, Elysiana, based on my time as a lifeguard on the Jersey Shore, which I assumed was outside my assigned genre.  I asked a mystery reviewer I knew at the time if she’d take it on.  “Does it have gangsters?” “Yup”  “Does a gun go off?”  “Yes ma’am.” “Does it kill somebody?” “It does.”  “Send it to me.”

            

            It also had stakes, consequences and moral dilemmas. 

              I use the reviewer’s definition to declare The Great Gatsby a crime novel, since it includes all three of her criteria.  As well as a mystery solved at the end, and a decent number of moral dilemmas. 

           

                I firmly believe in these clichés:  1. In real estate, the three most import things are location, location and location.  2. Variety is the spice of life.  3. In any piece of fiction, you have to care about the characters.  This is one area where the mystery form excels.  Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the anti-hero, a protagonist who does everything he can to earn our distrust and antipathy.  And yet, Sam Spade is and always will be a beloved hero.  Hammett obviously knew his Twain and Hemingway, and any undergraduate English major can draw the through line from Huck to Jake Barnes to Spade and onward to nearly every gumshoe and gunslinger ever to stalk American fiction.  But I think Hammett filled out the playbook and unleashed this prototype on the public at large.

As female and ethnic writers began moving into the field, you don’t have to look too far for a new type of Sam Spade progeny to populate the genre.  My favorite is Kinsey Millone of Sue Grafton’s alphabet series.  Kinsey is both anti-hero and female to her core.  She checks all the boxes while never abandoning her female sensibilites, while taking her hits, and getting some in herself when called upon.  Most importantly, she’s an indefatigable puzzle solver, with never a bit of lace or tea cozy in the picture. 

My vote for the anti-hero who both meets and transcends the mold is Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins.  He’s both a creature and a philosopher of the streets, relentlessly overcoming injustice to all concerned, including himself.  Mosely is one of those authors who not only knows and reveres literature, but skillfully entangles his work in gimlet-eyed observation without ever losing control of the driving narrative.

        Spade’s offspring have long spread across the globe.  You can visit one of them in the person of Jackson Lamb of Slow Horses, in Mick Herron’s brilliant books and fully realized  telly character.