UNIT 60

NORTH AMERICAN BLACK NOVEL: D. HAMMETT AND R. CHANDLER.

ENGLISH DETECTIVE NOVEL:
P.D. JAMES.

OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION.
1.1. Aims of the unit.
2. THE NORTH AMERICAN BLACK NOVEL AND THE ENGLISH DETECTIVE
NOVEL.
2.1. Crime fiction: common features.
2.2. The English detective novel.
2.2.1. Definition.
2.2.2. Historical and literary background.
2.2.2.1. The nineteenth century.
2.2.2.2. The twentieth century up to the present day.
2.2.3. Most representative authors: P.D. James.
2.3. The North American black novel.
2.3.1. Definition.
2.3.2. Historical and literary background.
2.2.2.1. The nineteenth century.
2.2.2.2. The twentieth century up to the present day.
2.3.3. Most representative authors: D. Hammett and R. Chandler.
3. MAIN EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS.
4. CONCLUSION.
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. INTRODUCTION.
1.1. Aims of the unit.
The present unit, Unit 60, aims to provide a useful introduction to the North American black novel and
the English detective novel. In doing so, we aim at reviewing the historical and literary background of
the time to analyse the life, works and style of the most representative authors in this period: D.
Hammett and R. Chandler within the former, and P.D. James, within the latter. Actually, it must be
borne in mind that the English detective novel emerged nearly a century before than the American
black novel, and therefore, it will be analysed first for the sake of chronological order.
Hence, we shall analyse how these authors reflected the prevailing ideologies of the day in the
literature of the time which, following Speck (1998), is an account of literary activity in which social,
economic, cultural and political allegiances are placed very much to the fore. This is, in fact, reflected
in the organization of the unit, which is divided into four main chapters, namely devoted to
establishing the link between the literary activity and the main social, economic and political changes
which took place from the late nineteenth century to the present-day situation both in Great Britain and
in the United States.
It is worth mentioning that since both types of novels are framed in the same centuries, but on different
sides of the Atlantic, we shall approach their analysis in terms of historical background at political,
social and economic level; literary background, so as to trace back to the very sources of the English
and North American detective novel; and finally, at a personal level, in which we shall examine the
life, works and style of the most representative authors of each type.

2. THE NORTH AMERICAN BLACK NOVEL AND THE ENGLISH DETECTIVE

NOVEL.

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2.1. Crime fiction: common features.
As a branch of crime fiction, the detective fiction, has similar features to any other fiction genre in
terms of content, elements or characteristics. Actually, the term ‘fiction’ is used to describe works of
information created from the imagination and, in contrast to non-fiction, which makes factual claims,
it may be partly based on factual occurrences but always contain imaginary content. Hence detective
fiction is a combination of imaginary events and religious, historical, social or psychological facts
taken from reality.
Regarding elements, thus plots (and subplot), characters (protagonists, antagonists), conflicts, climax,
resolution, and structure, this fictional genre also shares most elements with other types of fiction,
though the plot usually is focused around an investigation by a detective, usually in the form of the
investigation of a murder. A common feature is that the main character (the investigator) is usually
unmarried with some source of income other than a regular job, and frequently has an assistant, who is
asked to make all kinds of apparently irrelevant inquiries and acts as an audience surrogate for the
explanation of the mystery at the end of the story. It may also be an archetypal gossipy spinster, such
as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple
In addition, some typical features of this type of fiction are, broadly speaking, “an apparently insoluble
crime, uncooperative or dim-witted police, the detective (often an amateur), who may be eccentric, the
detective’s confident, who helps to clarify the problems, a variety of suspects and carefully laid red
herrings to put the reader off the scent, a suspect who appears guilty from circumstantial evidence, and
a resolution, often startling and unsuspected, in which the detective reveals how he has found out the
culprit” (Byron, 1990).

2.2. The English detective novel.

2.2.1. Definition.
First of all, the English detective novel is to be framed within the field of crime fiction which, in turn,
is to be included in the literary genre of fiction. It is defined as a “tale that features a mystery and/or
the commission of a crime, emphasizing the search for a solution. The detective story is distinguished
from other forms of fiction by the fact that it is a puzzle” (Encarta, 2004). This puzzle is related to
baffling circumstances, logical investigation, a series of clues, and deductive reasoning, among others
so as to direct the reader’s attention to the circumstances surrounding the crime rather than to the event
itself. Note that the English detective novel is often called a ‘whodunit’, which is regarded as the most
widespread subgenre of the detective novel. It is used where great ingenuity is exercised in revealing
the basic method of the murder in such a manner as to simultaneously conceal it from the readers, until
the end of the book, when the method and culprit are revealed.

2.2.2. Historical and literary background.

2.2.2.1. The nineteenth century.

Nineteenth-century Great Britain is to be politically framed upon the Georgian succession line under
the figures of George III (1760-1820), king of Great Britain and Ireland; his son, George IV
(1820-1830), who was succeeded by his brother, William IV; and finally, by the accession of Queen
Victoria to the throne when her uncle, William IV dies in 1837. Victoria would reign from 1837 to
1901 and would be the longest reigning British monarch.
So, regarded as a period of financial, naval and military strength, in which the British government
tended to prevail at political, social, economic, and technological level, the Georgian period was also
known at literary level. In general, the early Georgian literature dealt with art, music and a variety of
genres through the century (hence the wide variety of authors who produced a flourishing scholarly
and popular works that we still consider ‘classics’) whereas the late Georgian literature showed other
features distinct to the previous puritanism and mannerism. The Victorian Age includes several

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changes different in nature and, in this respect, the literary background presents a great variety of
aspects. Thus, the literary period is characterized by its morality, which to a great extent is a natural
revolt against the grossness of the earlier Regency, and the influence of the Victorian Court. In
addition, literary productions are affected by the intellectual developments in science, religion, and
politics.
In Britain, detective stories began to flourish as a popular form of literature after the establishment of
regular, paid police forces and their accompanying detective departments. Soon anonymous writers
with little police experience started to write thinly veiled fictions where detectives became
protagonists in cheap books such as Recollections of a Detective- Police Officer (1852). Other
writers also went on detective investigations such as Charles Dickens in his work Bleak House
(1852-1853), where he created the convincing character “Inspector Bucket of the Detective”. As
expected, Bucket’s investigations follow the Victorian parameters of clarity, precision, and certainty.
However, it was Dickens’s longtime friend and occasional collaborator, the English Wilkie Collins
(1824-1889), who is credited with the first great mystery novel The Woman in White (1860) and is
sometimes referred to as the ‘grandfather of English detective fiction’. He was similarly interested in
the activities of the detective bureau and, actually, his novel The Moonstone (1868), was defined by
T.S. Eliot as ‘the first and greatest of English detective novels. In it, Collins patterned “the rose-loving
sleuth Sergeant Cuff after the real-life Inspector Wicher and showed him making surprising but logical
deductions from the given facts” (Encarta, 2004).
Yet, it was in the late 1880s that the English author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) created
the greatest of all fictional characters, the detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr Watson.
Following Encarta (2004), “the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet appeared in 1887
and was followed by a series of short stories, published through the 1890s, that made Holmes and his
assistant, Dr. Watson, household names. The most famous Holmes stories include The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes (1892) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and the popularity of the Holmes
tales was such that Doyle’s determined attempt to kill off his hero in the short story “The Final
Problem” (1893) had to be abandoned. With the explanation that the great detective had disappeared,
not died, Doyle later resurrected Holmes and continued his adventures.”

2.2.2.2. The twentieth century.

The period of the 1920s and 1930s is generally referred to as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
During this period, a number of very popular writers emerged, mostly British but with a notable subset
of American and New Zealand writers. Female writers constituted a major portion of notable Golden
Age writers, including Agatha Christie, the most famous of the Golden Age writers, and among the
most famous authors of any genre, of all time. Four female writers of the Golden Age are considered
the four original "Queens of Crime": Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery
Allingham. Apart from Ngaio Marsh (a New Zealander) they were British. The first detective book
published in this decade was The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), whose author was Agatha
Christie (1891-1976). She is regarded as the first lady of crime fiction and also the heir of Doyle’s
tradition in the 1920s and 1930s. She is worldwide famous due to a three-fold creation: first, the
masterful detective Hercule Poirot, a tiny, weary Belgian, whose eccentricities did not please the
reading public; the character of Miss Marple, a perspicacious old spinster so masterful as the former;
and a masterly constructed plot, which is one of her best known characteristics in all her novels,
particularly reflected in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and Murder in the Orient Express
(1934).
The "puzzle" approach was carried even further into ingenious and seemingly impossible plots by John
Dickson Carr—also writing as Carter Dickson—who is regarded as the master of the "locked room
mystery", and Cecil Street, who also wrote as John Rhode, whose detective, Dr. Priestley, specialised

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in elaborate technical devices, while in the US the whodunit was adopted and extended by Rex Stout
and Ellery Queen, among others. The emphasis on formal rules during the Golden Age produced a
variety of reactions. Most writers were content to follow the rules slavishly, some flouted some or all
of the conventions, and some exploited the conventions to produce new and startling results.

2.2.3. Most representative authors: P.D. James.

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, was born on 3 August 1920 and is the most
representative contemporary British writer of crime fiction. When she was eleven, her family moved
to Cambridge and there she attended the Cambridge High School for Girls.
Regarding her main productions in terms of themes, characters and style, it has been noted by many
critics that James has upgraded and expanded the entire genre of mystery writing; and that many of her
books, especially the police procedurals starring Dalgliesh, the poetry writing detective, fit the
mainstream novel criteria as much as they do the detective genre. James’ strengths are
characterization and her ability to construct atmosphere and stories rich in detail. Also, her many years
of experience within the already mentioned bureaucracies add a complex stratum of insider’s
knowledge to her writing.
Her style is said to be literate, her plots complicated, her clues abundant and fair, and her solutions, a
surprise. Among her most popular detective novels we include: Cover Her Face (1962), which
introduced her Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh, who is described by some other characters
in the novel as tall, dark and handsome, an unusual appearance for a detective. In this work, she uses
an accurate prose full of emotional charge as well as in characterization. Next year she wrote A Mind
to Murder (1963) with similar characteristics; then An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), which
introduced her female sleuth called Cordelia Gray, a self-reliant independent 22-year-old detective
who owns a detective agency in the Soho and goes through melodramatic moments. Here it is shown
the feminine view of the detective work.
In The Black Tower (1975), she introduces classical detective story considerations and insights on
the subject of death, though she always tried to avoid it; Death of an Expert Witness (1977); Innocent
Blood (1980), a successful mainstream novel in which she tackled a subject and a theme difficult to
find in contemporary fiction: the nature of love. These works were followed by The Children of
Men (1992) and Death in Holy Orders (2001), which displays an insightful grasp of the inner workings
of church hierarchy and concerns murder at an Anglican theological college on the East Anglian coast.

2.3. The North American black novel.

2.3.1. Definition.
Similarly, to the English detective novel, the North American black novel is to be framed within the
field of crime fiction and, therefore, defined as a “tale that features a mystery and/or the commission
of a crime, emphasizing the search for a solution” and is distinguished from other forms of fiction by
the fact that it is a puzzle (Encarta, 2004). The baffling circumstances, logical investigation, a series of
clues, and deductive reasoning, among others are shared with the English novel so as to direct the
reader’s attention to the circumstances surrounding the crime rather than to the event itself. Yet,
thought the English detective story is known as a ‘whodunit’, the North American black novel was
known as the ‘hard-boiled’ detective stories.
2.3.2. Historical and literary background.
Yet, the main difference between the English detective novel and the North American black novel
relies not on the sources (since both of them were inspired on other European works, namely French)
or the content (since they both deal with the same topic s), but the time in which each type was
developed in literary and historical terms. Thus, the English type is to be framed within the classical
novel in the very early twentieth century whereas the North American type it is framed within
modernism between the 1920s and the 1940s.

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Since the Independence War, it would take fifty years of accumulated history for America to earn its
cultural independence and to produce the first great generation of American writers: Washington
Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. America’s literary
independence was slowed by a lingering identification with England, an excessive imitation of English
or classical literary models, and difficult economic and political conditions that hampered publishing.
It is in this background that we find relevant writers such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain.
Similarly, there is no doubt that the Victorian era, even in America, was the age of the English novel,
namely realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. So, within this century, the most
important crime-fiction authors before 1880 in the United States were Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849)
and Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935). It is worth noting that, except for her, there were no notable
American detective-story writers between Poe and the beginning of the 20th century. Poe, who
introduced the first great detective of fiction, C. Auguste Dupin, an abrupt man, and a reasoning
machine, was the pioneer of detective novel in the world.
Yet, the figure of the great detective was shattered by the advent of the American hard-boiled school,
founded in the pages of the pulp magazine Black Mask. The first hard-boiled writer was Carroll John
Daly, whose most important detective was Race Williams, but the outstanding figures in this genre
were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

2.3.3. Most representative authors: D. Hammett and R. Chandler.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961).

Hammett was born on 27 May, 1894 in St. Mary’s County, between the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers,
Maryland and he died on 10 January, 1961 at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, New York. After
working as an operative at the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency, he took his experience to the
written word. He and other early detective writers of this era made famous what is now known as the
“hard-boiled” detective genre. The rough, rogue operative who was a step ahead of the law and not
unlike many of the criminals he chased.
He was one of the twentieth-century greatest American novelist who also worked as a screenwriter in
Hollywood. He represented the early realistic vein in detective stories through the way his tough
heroes confronted the violence with full knowledge of its corrupting potential. In his novels Hammett
painted mean picture of the American society, where greed, brutality, and treachery are the major
driving forces behind human actions. For instance, Red Harvest (1929) is more than a superb crime
novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain; The Dain Course
(1929) is a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

His greatest novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930) shows the tale of Sam Spade, the quintessential
hard-boiled detective, who searches for order and truth in a perfect mystery novel as anyone is going
to get, and often rises above the genre as a tightly-constructed literary masterpiece, rich in both
character and plot. In this work the first-person narration is dropped and Hammett views the detective
from the outside. Also, Hammett’s language was unsentimental, journalistic, moral judgments
were left to the reader. Regarding the characters, a beautiful woman, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, is also
introduced to reflect the evil of femininity since she is eventually a murderer. The very influential The
Glass Key (1931), is a combination of an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of
telegraphic crispness. Woman in the Dark (1933) shows the author at the peak of his narrative
powers; The Thin Man (1934) is one of Hammett’s most enchanting creations, in which a rich,
glamorous couple solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and
unabashedly romantic , The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of
manners.

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Dashiell Hammett died on January 10, 1961. He may never have written anything of true significance
after 1934 (or at least, nothing close to the magnificence of his earlier work), but the myth of the
private eye turned writer lives on.

2.3.2. Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888-1959).

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago (July 22 1888), but grew up in England. Before returning to
the United States (1912), Chandler published twenty-seven poems and his first story, The Rose- Leaf
Romance. Once in the United States, he worked in a number of different jobs, for instance, in a bank,
as a bookkeeper and as an auditor in an oil company, from where he was dismissed for his alcoholic
problems.
Chandler was a slow writer so it took him five months to write his first work Blackmailers Don't Shoot
(1933) which, was published by Black Mask , the leading crime pulp of its time which also published
Dashiell Hammett’s stories. Between 1933 and 1939 he produced a total of nineteen pulp stories,
eleven in Black Mask , seven in Dime Detective, and one in Detective Fiction Weekly . Unlike most
of his pulp-writing colleagues, Chandler tried to expand the limits of the pulp formula to more
ambitious and humane direction which was fully reflected in his next work Killer in the Rain, which
later formed part of Chandler’s first novel The Big Sleep (1939), and then to screenwriting (1943). In
it we meet his main character, Philip Marlowe, a 38-year- old idealistic, honest and romantic private
investigator, who is a man of honour and a modern day knight with a college education, but tough and
cynical at the same time. He is described as an old-fashioned character, chivalrous, with an individual
sense of conduct and justice, and as an intellectual who reads Hemingway, T.S. Eliot and Flaubert,
among others. These characteristics transcend his actions and it is actually shown in the maturity
expressed in The High Window (1942).

Writing proved lucrative, and was something Chandler enjoyed, so he continued. So, he wrote
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) and The Lady in the Lake (1943). After this, Chandler met with some
success writing for Hollywood and, in 1943 he was asked to work on the script for Double Indemnity,
the novel by James Cain. Although Billy Wilder and Chandler did not get on all that well, Wilder
quickly recognized Chandler’s ability as a screenwriter and he started to write. Thus, And Now
Tomorrow (1944), Five Murderers (1944), Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder (1944), The Unseen
(1945), an original script; and The Blue Dahlia (1946). The same year (1946), he and Cissy moved to
La Jolla (north of San Diego) where he continued writing while taking care of his beloved wife, who
suffered from fibrosis of the lungs. In 1946 Chandler received Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers
of America for screenplay.

3. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING.

Literature, and therefore, literary language is one of the most salient aspects of educational activity. In
classrooms all kinds of literary language (poetry, drama, prose –novel, short story, detective fiction,
minor fiction-, periodicals) either spoken or written, is going on for most of the time. Yet, handling
literary productions in the past makes relevant the analysis of literature in the twentieth and
twenty-first century in this unit, especially when we find literary adaptations to the cinema. Yet, what
do students know about the literature in this period? At this point it makes sense to examine the
historical background of Great Britain and the United States up to the present day so as to check what
our students know about these crime fiction writers which are specialized in detective stories.

But how do nineteenth and twentieth century English and North-American detective novel tie in
with the new curriculum? Spanish students are expected to know about both cultures and their
presence in Europe since students are required to know about the world culture and history. The

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success partly lies in the way literary works become real to the users. Some of this motivational force
is brought about by intervening in authentic communicative events. Otherwise, we have to recreate
as much as possible the whole cultural environment in the classroom by means of novels, short stories,
documentaries, history books, or their family’s stories.
In short, the knowledge about British and American culture (history and literature) should become
part of every literary student’s basic competence. The main aims that our currently educational system
focuses on are mostly sociocultural, to facilitate the study of cultural themes, as our students must be
aware of their current social reality within the international scene.
4. CONCLUSION.
On reviewing the issue of Unit 60, we have examined the North American black novel and the English
detective novel up to the present day. In doing so, we have reviewed the historical and literary
background of the time so as to analyse the life, works and style of the most representative authors in
this period: D. Hammett and R. Chandler within the former, and P.D. James, within the latter. Actually,
both of them represent two different types of detective fiction within the genre of crime fiction: the
English detective novel, more classical and with Victorian reminiscences, commonly known as the
‘whodunit’, and the North American novel, more related to public interest in the problems of modern,
urban life, particularly in crime , commonly known as ‘hard-boiled’ detective fiction.
So, Chapter 2 has namely offered an overview of the North American black novel and the English
detective novel in terms of common features within the genre of crime fiction, regarding main
elements and literary sources. Then we have introduced the two types of novels in terms of definition;
a parallel presentation of historical and literary background in the nineteenth and twentieth century up
to the present day; and finally, the most representative figures in this field, that is, the English P.D.
James and the American Samuel Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Chapter 3 will be devoted to the main educational implications in language teaching regarding the
introduction of this issue in the classroom setting.
So far, we have attempted to provide the reader in this presentation with a historical, literary and
cultural background on the vast amount of literature productions in the twentieth and twenty-
first-century literature in Great Britain and the United States.

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Albert, Edward. 1990. A History of English Literature. Walton-on-Thames. Nelson. 5th edition
(Revised by J.A. Stone).
Byron, T.J. 1990. Murder Will Out, The Detective Fiction. Oxford University Press.
Cook, C. and J. Paxton. 2001. European Political Facts of the Twentieth Century. Palgrave.
Council of Europe (1998) Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common European
Framework of reference.
Fiedler, Leslie. 1960. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Criterion Books. Keating,
H.R.F. 1994. Writing Crime Fiction. A & C Black Ltd., London.
Magnusson, M., and Goring, R. (eds.). 1990. Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Ousby, Ian. 1997. The Crime and Mystery Book. A Reader’s Companion. London. Palmer, R. 1980.
Historia Contemporánea, Akal ed., Madrid.
Philips, K. 2002. Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. Broadway Books,
U.S.
Rogers, P. 1987. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Thoorens, L. 1969. Panorama de las literaturas Daimon: Inglaterra y América del Norte. Gran Bretaña
y Estados Unidos de América. Ediciones Daimon.
Van Ek, J.A., and J.L.M. Trim, 2001. Vantage. Council of Europe. Cambridge University Press.