Detective Fiction Part 2

Okay since I outlined the difference between American hardboiled detective fiction and classic whodunnit in the previous post, I suppose I should say how to use this knowledge in an actual rpg.

So to reiterate without rambling:

1) for the classic detective, the status quo is good and is worth restoring, which happens by solving the mystery; and
2) for the hardboiled detective, the status quo is oppressive and must be survived in order to solve the mystery (and protect whomever needs it).

So the difference doesn’t really lie with the players’ characters, it lies with the setting, and with whichever person or persons that has the responsibility of portraying it (usually the person with the Game Master role).

In both types of stories you have protagonists that stick their nose into things they might be better off leaving alone. Miss Marple and Marlowe both do this. So all you really need to encourage that is tying xp to investigating mysteries. Just because the cops are always happy to see Miss Marple in her novels doesn’t mean you can’t play an rpg where the cops try to put the frame on an old woman, who has to find the real killer to prove her innocence, yeah? Then again, if Philip Marlowe didn’t have any police corruption to complain about, he wouldn’t be the same character, would he? Not really. The environment he has to live in is what makes him the cynical detective he is.

So anyway, that means if you are going to GM a hardboiled detective setting, you portray the cops as corrupt and in the pocket of the rich who are evil. Nobody wants the detective protagonist(s) around, except the ones who want to use them. The hardboiled detective solves the mysteries that the police don’t want to solve because they don’t want to do the work and because powerful people don’t want the truth to come out. The harboiled protagonist has to fight against all that to get anywhere.

And if you want to GM a classic whodunnit, you portray cops as either incompetent or merely no match for the clever villain, who is some kind of evil anomaly (even if they murder for inheritance). The classic detective solves the mysteries no one else is able to solve.

And everyone is grateful when they do solve it. For the hardboiled private eye, maybe their client is satisfied and maybe they aren’t hated by the cops. Maybe.

So there you go: build some tools to do those things and voila you’ve got yourself a game that emulates the genre.

Detective Fiction Part 1

 

I think it’s easy to assume that American detective fiction differentiates itself from other types of mysteries and crime stories by its aesthetic gloss, but it actually follows a completely different narrative.

In the classic (mostly British) detective story, a mystery throws the world into chaos. The detective solves this perplexing riddle using their intellect and restores order to the world. But that detective can be anybody smart, from Holmes to the Hardy Boys (or Miss Marple).

In sharp contrast, the American detective is someone who used to uphold the status quo, but quit when he discovered the hegemonic class is a murderous rape demon that debases people for fun and will destroy whoever opposes it.

This is not the story that American detective fiction tells, however. It’s the protagonist’s backstory. Chandler didn’t write any stories about Marlowe working for the DA, only him being a private eye afterward. The actual story is this character being reminded, once again, of exactly why he quit doing the dirty work and why you can’t just quit and walk away clean. This is an important distinction to make, because if that backstory was the actual story, it would be very much a white man’s story because that’s who runs the meatgrinders for the rich white people. This is America, after all.

But this formula also works when Walter Mosley writes his novels about Easy Rawlins, a Black detective in post-war LA. Rawlins fought in the war, which makes his status-quo-upholding past explicit, but the story would still work without that. Easy Rawlins doesn’t need the white American detective backstory to be an American hard-boiled detective. He’s Black. He already knows what kind of damage rich white folks (and the people who work for them) do to the world.

Where the classic detective removes a source of uncertainty (and usually a source of harm in the revealed criminal), the American detective is just trying to make it through another round of the shit that never stops. How they find out that power is corrupt isn’t the real story, so it can be changed. Being reminded (again) that power is corrupt is the story. Which means just about anyone can be the lead in the American detective story, as long as they begin that story knowing.

As much as I like Chandler, there’s still occasional moments of racism and homophobia in his books that go beyond him just writing about crooked people. And it’s too bad because, according to my opinions stated above, the form doesn’t need it.

This is definitely an rpg post, by the way. Don’t show it to people who only read books and don’t also play them.

Part 2 can be found in the next post.