Detective Story

Everyone loves a good whodunit, but why does the figure of the fictional detective tower so staggeringly over the modern world? He or she is a seeker of truth, a resolver of conflict, a subcultural liaison and perhaps even a shaman for an increasingly secular world. Join Robert and Christian for dive through the history, science and cultural resonance of the detective story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From how Stuff
Works dot com. It was a dark night in the
Naked City, which is probably ideal given all the nakedness.
But I wasn't concerned with a lack of clothing street
lighting in this room with troubless and needed answers about

(00:23):
the resident power of the detective story. So I went
to meet my man on forty two Street. What do
you got for me? I got some Raymond Chandler primo stuff,
the Big Sleep, the Long Goodbye. I'm thinking something a
work setting or publication date, because I've got some brother
cat feels some Gordian and I'm trying to understand the
roots of the thing. Well, why we love it? Why

(00:45):
we can't get enough? Okay, I have some homes around
here somewhere, how about pose the murders in the room Morgue.
We're talking eight forty one here, a killer ap real
primo stuff. But that doesn't explain why we love it? Well,
why didn't you just say something? I think I've got
the perfect thing for you right here. Hey, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your mind. My name is Robert lamb Hi,

(01:07):
I'm Christian Seger. I hope you enjoyed our little foray
into radio detective drama. There, because in this episode we
are of course going to discuss the power of detective fiction.
There's a little science in here, there's some culture or
some cultural resonance. Uh, we think you'll enjoy this journey,
this ride not unlike the journey, not unlike the ride

(01:29):
that a detective takes us on in a work of fiction. Yeah,
the research really panned out on this one. I like,
uh that there were so many different paths that researchers
have gone down looking at how detective stories affect our
culture and our human psychology and how we come to
them as well. Yeah, and it's one of those genres
that I feel like everybody just I can pretty much

(01:50):
say everybody has at least dipped a toe in this
if if it's a you know, straight up detective novel
that you've read or some show that you've watched on television,
and every one is familiar with the trope and probably
has enjoyed it at some point in their life. Yeah,
So let's like just dabble into this for a little bit.
So what's your big experience with detective fiction? Oh, I mean,

(02:11):
like my earliest experiences were watching Jeremy Brett as Sherlock
Holmes and like my my family would sit down in
ones that were on PBS. Yeah, we would watch when
we were living in Canada and as a kid, that
would come on and we would watch those and my
dad would would would take them. Uh, we had tapes
with like, you know, three different cases per VHS and

(02:34):
so yeah, that was like my my earliest entry into
this world of detectives for sure. Yeah, Holmes is definitely
like the gateway drug for detective stories. I remember when
I was gosh, like maybe between five and seven, my
grandfather gave me this leather bound copy of homes Stories
that he got from he had like a subscription to
Reader's Digest, and I still have that. That's the like,

(02:56):
those those are the home stories I read whenever I
turned back to that stuff is just big tone of
of detectives. Was this the one that had the kind
of if not the original type set, then something that
was orchestrated to look Yeah, and the paper was like
like a kind of old tattered ridge to the side
of the everything, so it felt like you're reading like
a nineteenth century book. Yeah. Cool, Yeah, I think I

(03:18):
think we had the same volume kicking around the house,
and of course a great thing about detective fiction is
it you keep coming back to it, right, because they're
just limitless variations on it. Like like even in the
past few years, I really I really enjoyed a book
from our Scott Baker called Disciple of the Dog, which
involved a uh, a detective by the name of Disciple

(03:39):
Manning who has perfect just photographic memory, but also of
course is plagued with different personal problems and he's like
going up against an end of the world cult. That
sounds like the perfect example for one of the research
studies we're going to touch on later. But yeah, I
you know, looking back on it, I realized that I
was more influenced I think by detective fiction in tell

(04:00):
vision and films, and I was by literature. I think
Holmes was obviously my big starting point, and then like
kind of detective type genre stuff within comics, especially Batman
in the whole, like detective comics idea of Batman being like,
you know, the ultimate detective. But um, for me, it
was definitely uh the Thomas Harris Hannibal Lecter type stuff,

(04:21):
specifically with Will Graham as the detective trying to solve
these primes. Red Dragon. Yeah, I love the movie Red Dragon.
I love Man Hunter. Uh. Um. And and the new
TV show as well has been something that I've been
really into, and then just recently I've gone back and
started rewatching that nineties TV show Millennium with Lance Hendrickson.

(04:42):
Oh yes, this is from the same guy did the
X File. Yeah, Chris Carter and um. You know, it's
basically the same premise as as a the Will Graham character.
You know, Lance Hendrickson plays this guy Frank Black who uh,
when he he's a profiler, when he comes across a
scene of a crime, he can see glimpses through the
killer's eyes and stuff like that. Yeah. So so very

(05:04):
similar to especially the the TV version of Will Ground
that we get with Hannibal. Yeah. Yeah, very much so.
In fact, I'd say that that the New TV show
probably pulls a little bit from Millennium, but it's a
whereas Millennium I think pulls a lot from Seven from
the movie Seven and Uh, and that movie is a

(05:24):
perfect example. That's another one that I loved when I
was Gosh, I think it came out like my freshman
year in college. But Um, that is, that's a movie
that really expresses that certain kind of detective drama that's
just nihilistic and this view of the world. And the
detectives themselves aren't particularly geniuses. I mean, we see Morgan
Freeman go to the library one time and read a

(05:45):
bunch of things about religion. But other than that, you know,
they're not like they're not like Sherlock Holmes solving this
stuff on the fly, you know. Of course, another great
example of detective fiction and film is is probably Blade Runner,
because that's one that I feel, especially on a visual level,
like really resonates with everyone, and it drew from you know,
sort of classic motifs as well as a new kind

(06:08):
of cyberpunk vibe. Yeah. Yeah, Blade Runner, like more than
I think a lot of things that are called noir nowadays,
incorporates the genre of noir into science fiction. Now. Obviously,
we could keep going just talking about like the various
detective stories that you and I have read and the
film variations, um, and as well as just all the

(06:30):
stuff that's out there and in the popular culture, because
it seems like every other TV show is some sort
of police procedural or some sort of detective story that's
going on. You could just name them one after another,
but at heart, like, what is the what are the
basics of the detective story. Yeah, there's something inherently comforting
about the detective story, whether it's on TV or you're

(06:52):
reading just like a pulpy paperback novel. But essentially, what
we're talking about here is crime fiction that centered around
a single investigation, which is almost always a murder. Right,
every every investigator, a police officer, is a homicide detective
in these because that's the most serious, right, that's the
most potent, life shattering, existential thing you could possibly look exactly.

(07:14):
They're not like usually going after an arsonist, although that's
pretty serious as well. You know, you're breaking the law.
You're also just like the law in a legal sense,
but also in a moral sense, you've committed a crime
and to God. Yeah, and there's a there's an aspect
to murder as well that plays into the aesthetics of
the detective drama that we'll get into later, but in particular,
you know, there's this idea that they are a professional

(07:37):
that's usually outside of the institutions of law somehow, you know,
like Sherlock Holmes for instance, was a private investigator. He didn't,
he wasn't a part of the police force, he didn't
work for Scotland Yard And and in a lot of
the examples that we were just talking about, all those
all those various characters Will Graham, Frank Black, uh Decker

(07:57):
from Blade Runner, they're all operating on their own, outside
of the system, even though there's somewhat connected to it. Yeah. Yeah,
like the so many of our detectives. There at least
if they are still on the force and still part
of beneficial system, then they're there. There may be a
little bit dirty, or at least they're damaged by what
they're having to deal with. Yeah. Absolutely, Which, Okay, one
last example here, which I think we should get into

(08:20):
a True Detective, which was huge last year when it
came out. I don't know about you, but I was
massively influenced by it. It's one of the best things
that I've ever seen, just completely television fiction. Yeah, and
uh and obviously, you know, without giving anything away, that
story is very much about guys who are part of
the police force but are just torn to shreds by

(08:42):
you know, the things that they see in the the
drama of this murder that they're trying to solve. It's
a serious of murders, that's right, And new season kicking
off I think this weekend. So yeah, cross your fingers.
I really hope that it's good too. Yeah, We've we've
had some The first trailer that came out was a
little uh, felt a little off uh. And then when

(09:03):
we learned that there wasn't going to be an occult
um theme in this one, that was also maybe a
little disappointing to some of us. But I think it's
in a lot of ways, it's going to be like, um,
the whatever, the follow up to Mad Max Fury Road
is right, like the criticism the praise has been so
high for that and and was so high for season

(09:25):
one of True Detective, that no matter what happens, people
are going to be critical of it and and find
a reason for to kind of shoot it down, you know.
But I'm hoping to have, you know, like we're talking
about here that just like the fun experience of a
detective ride, but also something that will statiate me sort
of intellectually. Yeah, and you know, he said there wasn't
gonna be anything occult in this particular season, but he

(09:46):
didn't see anything about aliens. So I'm holding out hope
that alien invasion in California is going to be the
subplot here that sounds to about halfway. It sounds like
a perfect use of Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams um.
But indeed, the detective story oftentimes centers around murder. You
could you could even make a case that one of

(10:07):
the oldest, if not the oldest detective stories out there,
with its roots and in the Bible and pre biblical sources,
is that of kine Enabel, right, right, And we were
talking about this earlier and my reaction was really the
detective And to give your answer, I think it's intriguing. Yeah,
the the detective here is God, etective God on the scene.

(10:28):
And granted he doesn't even have a very hard case
because there's one suspect, period and they're what you know,
they're they're they're only a handful of people in the
world in this particular scenario. So God comes on the
scenes that a Caine who killed Abel, and then he
nails him for the crime. Right, Yeah, it's not it's
a it's a one and done who done it? Yeah,
and judges him dishes out punishment like everything is. We'll

(10:50):
discuss like there's a lot in the Cane enable uh
story that uh that is that is kind of that
distilled detective story. Yeah, and plays out over the centuries.
Is detective stories go on? But so I think like
the one that really kicked things off though, for like
the the current genre that we think of would be
Edgar Allen Poe's Murders of the Room Morgue are sorry

(11:11):
Murders in the Room Morgue, which we reference to the intro. Yeah,
that was one and uh and that one, that one
is often cited as being one of the really early
key detective stories that that that that really influences everything
to come there after. And there's this surge in the
mid to late nineteenth century with detective stories, right, I mean,

(11:32):
Poe really kicks it off, but that's when you get
you know, kind of Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and and
and and lots of others. Also early twentieth century as well,
with Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterson, Uh what else? Oh,
I mean, yeah, the list goes on and on. Chandler
and Dashel Hammett, Yeah, the the the Philip Marlowe books,

(11:55):
which I read one of those and and really loved it,
and I keep meaning to pick up more because yeah,
I've read a lot Chandler's short stories, but I've never
read the Marlowe stuff. Yeah it's good. It's good. Um yeah,
and you you do see kind of I mean, certainly,
detective fiction is almost has a viral consistency because it
it spreads out. It starts as this kind of you know,
the classic Golden Age stuff, which is which is often

(12:17):
all about like a very intellectual individual using their intellect
to solve this crime. Uh, and then it, you know,
it spreads into different countries and in different cultures and
then into different sub genres, etcetera. Of course, the the
the the the hard boiled detective fiction becomes really big
in the United States, which is and it kind of
takes off as its own thing, and that's very different

(12:39):
from what we're thinking of as this sort of traditional
nineteenth century detective drama where hard boiled detectives or you know,
they've always got that self narration kind of like you know,
the gritty It was a dark and stormy night, and
everybody's corrupt, the all organizations are corrupt. And there's this
cycle of violence that the detective finds themselves trapped within
their almost like an anti hero, right yeah. And it's

(13:02):
it's less a matter of like one intellect against the problem.
It's it's like the detectives and the hard boiled fiction.
They tend to be as much gut and heart and
lust I guess too, as they tangle with various fin fatales. Right, yeah, exactly,
fim fatals spent out of that. We've also got, you know,
coming up on I don't know, I wonder when the

(13:22):
police procedural officially started. Do you think the seventies? Uh? Well,
I mean you probably earlier than that, right, because you
have like dragnet and stuff. Yeah, I guess right. Dragnet
was what late sixties? Yeah, I think so, okay, so yeah,
but police procedurals are everywhere now. I mean it's like
every time I don't have cable, but anytime I'm like
at a hotel or something and I flip through the channels,
it's like of TV is uh, shows with acronyms that

(13:46):
I don't understand that are about various detective solving crimes yea,
And those are I guess they're more almost a return
to the the intellectual detective in a sense, because here
is the you know, they have individuals, of course, individ
characters in the shows, but it seems to be more
about here is a system, and here's a science, and
the system and the science works, and it works in

(14:08):
a ways of course on TV that it doesn't actually
in real lite, right absolutely. Yeah. I had a big
wake up call with that when I served as former
on a jury duty and they had a forensic expert
coming and present to the jury as they often do
in cases, and it was nothing like like C S
I or any of those things, and even you know,
the expert themselves, so there wasn't a lot of uh

(14:29):
certainty with the science that they were performing. But that
that's a whole another episode, which I think it would
be fun to talk about. Forensic science is fascinating, but yeah,
I mean we're surrounded by police procedurals. I think serial
killer mysteries like we've been you know we were talking
about earlier, those are kind of my jam the millennial
type stuff for Hannibal Lecter, Like there's a there's a

(14:50):
popularity of that right now, probably since the nineties. I
would say, um, seven maybe kicked that off, although you know,
you could go back further that Thomas Harris stuff started
in the eighties, I think so, yeah, yeah, and then
uh yeah, there are a number of books that kind
of Another one is Falling Angel by William Hortsburg. I
don't know that one. Um. William Hortsburgh wrote the screenplay

(15:13):
to legend and then Falling Angels made into the fairly
lackluster in my opinion film Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke
and Robert de Niro. I have heard about Angel Hart,
but I've never seen it. Okay, yeah, the book the
books look pretty fun though, because it's very much this
uh this hard boiled detective story but with satanic elements. Okay,

(15:34):
sounds right at my alley. All Right, I'll check it out.
So forgive this. We're gonna continue to get a little
off topic talking about various examples of the detective genre here,
but to return to the mid eighteen hundreds, particularly to
the eighteen sixties, because that's when you really see the
boom happen like full force. Um. And there are a

(15:57):
number of interesting factors to take into accoun about the
eighteen sixties. UM. First of all, industrialization and the growth
of literacy. You have more people than ever that are
able to read. You have new machinery that's pumping out
more books than ever. They're sold in stalls that you're
you know, your local metro station, and you have a
growing population of readers who tend to go for more

(16:18):
sensational content, more entertaining content, rather than you know, upper
crust stuff. This is so we're talking books for the
middle class. Um, yeah, and I think that there's a
there's a connection there too. We're gonna talk about the
influence of religion on the detective story, and there's a
connection there's certainly between the emergence of literacy and the

(16:40):
lower classes and the availability of books too pretty much anybody,
and that the connection of sort of roles of religion
shifting away from the church into detective stories. Indeed, um,
you know, and granted at the time as well, you
actually had real detectives out there, you know, there were Um,

(17:00):
it was about this time that the Metropolitan Police in
London created its detective branch. Um it was two but
in the eighteen sixties there was one particular case in
which you had Jack Whicher of the Detective Branch making
headlines investigating a sensational child murder. That's a great, great name.

(17:21):
I mean, you couldn't make that, which Jack Witcher does.
Yeah you could. It sounds made up, but this is
the dude's name. Every time Jack Witcher gets his name. Yeah,
but yeah, I don't know if if he did. But yeah,
I'm not sure how the case actually turned out. I'm
curious to know. But but in a way it's I mean,
the key here was that it ended up in the headlines,
and so people were were fascinated by the story of

(17:43):
this real life detective. And we have all the crime
fiction popping up as well. And then, as you mentioned
on the religion angle, um, there's a strong case to
be made and it's made rather elegantly, I think by
crime writer Jason Webster in two thousand fifteen Ian mag
As an article titled Unholy Mystery, and essentially he argues

(18:04):
that the that the modern detective serves as a sort
of secular shaman um he or she is the priest,
the inter mediary between God and man, between truth and man. Uh.
That can no longer exist entirely within the religious world
because our world view continues to break free from the
shackles of religious thinking. I really like this idea. It's

(18:26):
something that I had been thinking about independently, not particularly
about detectives, but about storytelling in general, that that fiction,
modern day fiction especially sort of serves the same role
that a shaman or a priest used to serve in
a small kind of microcosm community like we used to
think of. And Uh, this this, this definitely plays out

(18:47):
in his uh, his thesis, I guess for this piece, right,
he talks about how detectives like shamans are the problem
solvers for their community. There's somebody who can restore order
when there's chaos. Uh. They give us answers. This is
a quote directly from his piece. They give us answers
to the most pressing and urgent questions, not only who
done it, but how and why and what the means

(19:08):
are and uh, and all of it's done through the journey, right,
which we which we brought up earlier. It's a it's
all about the journey. That's the that's the fun experience
of it. I would this is gonna be a weird connection,
but I'd liken it to watching a cooking show actually, like,
like there's pleasure in watching people bake a cake on TV.
They're going through all the steps putting the ingredients together

(19:30):
and the thing comes out right. And the detective story
is very similar, and that the detectives going through this
journey collecting this evidence, seeking out hints and clues, and
then getting the bad guy. Yeah, I mean, like the
best detective fiction often involves like all the pieces are
out there for us to see, you can't put it together.
In a way, We're looking at that table of ingredients
and saying, I can't imagine what this is possibly going

(19:52):
to turn into, and then the detective, the cook comes in,
turns into a cake and you're like, whoa, it was
there all along. I was essentially looking at a k exactly.
And those are the best kind, right, or at least
that's how I experience it. Like the best ones are
the ones where you you don't figure it out on
your own. It's not like a Scooby Doo episode. Scooby
Doo the hallmark of detective fiction for our generation, where

(20:16):
you know, pretty much from the first five minutes into
a Scooby Doo episode, you're like, okay, and it's the
you know, amusement park owner wearing a mask pretending to
be the real estate agent or something. I'm glad you
brought up Scooby Doo that because really, before I watched
Herlock Holmes, I was watching Scooby Doo. I was watching
these little mystery stories. Yeah, it's funny, Like I think
at the time, I never really thought of them as

(20:37):
detective stories, but they certainly are right there playing around
with that. And but that now the stuff that I
enjoy is true detective right, Like, remember when the first
season was playing and social media was going insane trying
to figure out who was responsible, what was going on, where,
where the story was going, you know, and and everyone
was wrong basically, uh, and that was satisfying in some way,

(21:01):
especially you know, there was a nice bow put on
it at the end. A lot of people really wanted
that Scooby Doo moment where the mask was ripped off,
but it wasn't really provided. Yeah, but let's talk a
little bit more about this shaman thing here. So the
industrialization part is definitely connected to this, I think. So
you've got literacy growing. People are more than ever able

(21:23):
to read. And the reason I should clarify and like
kind of connect the dots here so the church really
used to be the ones who are sort of in
control of literacy, right. They church, the clergy to people
who worked there, they were the ones who read. They
were the ones who could explain to you what was
within a book, which was subsequently explaining the world around you, right, Uh,

(21:46):
in connection with the religion at hand. Whereas the detective
novel becomes available, literacy is for everybody. You've got books everywhere.
I'm assuming these are like novellas, like pamphlet books to write,
like Murders of the Room or isn't that long? Yeah?
Or they're published they were coming out in publications. Yeah.
But it allows you the reader to sort of explore

(22:08):
the world around you vicariously through this detective who's you know,
leading you about and throughout these stories, the detectives are
very priestly, right. There's a lot of connections to religious figures,
whether they're shamans, monks, priests. Uh. It's interesting. They're almost
always monk like in their dedication to solving the crime. Right.

(22:28):
They're very singular in their focus, and there's no Uh,
they're not the hard boil detectives that were used to write.
They're not tempted by outside influences if a fem at
all came across, Uh, you know, Sherlock Holmes. This is
old Sherlock Holmes, not like Robert Downey junior Sherlock. Uh,

(22:48):
he would largely ignore them in favor of solving the crime. Right,
he wasn't interested in in anything beyond the dedication to
solving the mystery. Yeah, I mean, there there are a
lot of comparisons to be made between in Holmes and
a member of the clergy, right, because he's um, he's
likely celibate. Um. Right, I remember particularly, I remember a

(23:09):
line from the TV adaptation where Holmes talks about how
he's never loved anyone. Oh yeah, and it's when you
get this idea and it's a creature that it exists
outside of that. Yeah. Yeah. And there's something compelling about
that obviously to us that like the the urge and
necessities of the human body or not, something that he

(23:29):
succumbs to. Right, Whereas in like I recently reread the
Irene Adler story, what is that the Bohemian the title?
But yeah, a scandal in Bohemia, I think is what
it's called. And they recently did that on the Benedict
cumber Patch, uh BBC show version, and it was much

(23:51):
more titilating, you know, like I believe that he first
encounters Irene Adler and she's totally naked in a room
when he when he first meets her, you know, and
there's obviously this play on will they won't they kind
of stuff going on, and he's certainly not meant to
be celibate in that show. But uh, going back to this,
you know, resurgence of detective fiction in the nineteenth century,

(24:15):
that was that was off the table. It wasn't really
part of the concerns. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's certainly
a strong case to be made that that that Holmes
was essentially kind of a Franciscan friar who um uh.
You know, his natural habitat is a you know, mystical
retreat where he isolates himself for weeks, you know, just
you know, he's on the couch, not moving, just in
pure intellectual thought, almost as if in prayer. Uh, of

(24:37):
course he's in prayer to his his intellect um. And
of course um burto Echo picked up on this when
he recashed Herlock Holmes as brother William of Baskerville in
the Name of the Rose. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's perfect.
I hadn't thought about that, Yeah, because he's like, that's
he's very on the note that, like, that's he's essentially

(24:58):
Sherlock Holmes, to the point that the first few pages
of of the novel like match up with a study
in scarlet, Like really, I didn't know that. Oh wow,
now it makes me kind of want to go back
and at least rewatched that movie. Was sean con replay
that character? Huh um? And then of course, you know
we mentioned G. K. Chesterson. I'm saying his name wrong, right,

(25:21):
Chesterton is Chesterton Chesterton? Yeah, I meanly know him from
the book The Man Who Was Thursday, but his father
Brown series was about a priest or maybe he was
a former priest I can't remember, who was also a detective.
And this is a big there's a whole line of these,
like like even in the States, like was it father down,
Father Downey, Father Down? Deep mysteries Like oh, I don't

(25:44):
know those ones. It was kind of you know, it
was kind of a murder she wrote just about the
same murder she wrote is sort of like a version
of this as well. I don't particularly remember Angela Lansbury
having anything but dedication for her writing and solving these mysteries.
It wasn't like had a lot of outside interests. But
I think there was maybe even a crossover. I'd have
to go back, but yeah, there was. There was at

(26:06):
least one US show that had a a priest solving crimes.
Of course, there are various examples of this in British television,
like It's I think an ongoing trope. Yeah. Um, now
we've talked about the church here, but but I do
want to return to the idea of the shaman itself
and the older sense of the word um, because there
are a lot of fantastic comparisons to be made here. Uh.

(26:29):
You know, you look to a shaman and a it's
particularly in an an older culture, right, as someone who
looks inward to the mysteries of the soul and human consciousness,
and they take us on a journey, sometimes a terrifying,
soul wrenching journey of discovery. They help you, they help
an outsider explore questions by bringing you into a sacred space,

(26:50):
by producing a tray of magical substances. Often they alter
your perception and experience of reality. And key here too.
The shaman is is very much an individual with a
foot into world, both the real world that we live
in every day and this other world, this spirit world,
this demon world, god world, whatever you want to make
of it. Yeah, and that's key to the detective story

(27:12):
as well, the living within two worlds. Right. That's why
these guys more often than not are not part of
law institutions of law because they in order to catch
the criminal, in order to solve the mystery, they have
to somewhat have that darkness in their heart right and
be able to travel the road that the criminal travels

(27:34):
as well and understand them. Yeah, indeed. Uh. And you
know there's also a case to be made, particularly with
Sherlock Holmes. Um. Sherlock Holmes sometimes takes a powerful drug
to help him answer the questions he secret. Yeah. And
in the case of did you ever read or see
an adaptation of The Devil's Foot, No, it's probably my
favorite home story because it involves a powerful african Um

(27:58):
substance uh one as the Devil's Foot When when when
it's just basically a shamanistic powder, but it's used in
to commit a crime where like one or two people
were murdered. I forget that body count. Uh, they just
killed dead byde and the rest are driven insane and uh.
And so Holmes ends up breathing in some of it

(28:19):
just to experiment with the substance and has like a
terrifying vision. So that sounds right up my alley. I'm
curious about that because right like, this is one of
those things about homes that is often disputed and people
go back and forth on I remember when the new show,
the BBC one that's popular right now, sorry airing, and

(28:42):
there was there were all the suggestions to him having
a drug problem. There are people complaining about it not
having a drug problem, about about him having and saying like, oh,
what is this. This isn't part of the Sherlock Holmes
that I know, And it's right there in the original texts,
you know. Yeah, I remember in the Jeremy Brett um
versions it was it was very very present. But then
I believe I remember correctly Brett made it a priority

(29:05):
to sort of to get homes off the drugs. So
like there's a scene where he buries his pipe and
all because he didn't he didn't want young kids to
watch ar like Holmes and inspired to partake, whereas, like
I think, in the new one he just wears like
a lot of nicotine patches or something that's right, which
is which is another interesting way of of tackling the

(29:26):
same issue. But I love this idea of the scientist
as shaman, particularly when you look at it coming out
of the eighteen sixties, right on the heels of the
eighteen fifty nine publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin
of Species, which had a profound impact, just leaving a
kind of a cultural vacuum in its wake. Yeah, and
there's something that I would like to touch on here

(29:47):
as well, from another article that I researched for for
this episode. Uh. It was an article called Detective Fiction
in the Aesthetic of Crime, which is in the two
thousand fourteen issue of Raritan magazine and based really it's
a fairly simple premise, which was that detective stories came
out of this connection to Darwinism, uh, and that time's

(30:10):
obsession with medical knowledge and especially vivisection. Right, and we
get Jack the Ripper around that same time, the Elephant Man,
all these sort of like you know, learned men of
England examining the body and basically tearing it apart. And
there so, the author of this piece, J. S. Harpham
basically puts forward the idea that the aesthetic of murder,

(30:35):
the aesthetic of taking a body apart and killing somebody,
was prevalent within British society at the time. Uh and
and as such an influence the detective fiction. Uh it
made it so that there was almost a celebration, celebration
of murder as an art form. I mean when I
think about all of these different examples that we've just

(30:56):
been talking about, right, and all these detective fiction authors
coming up with these incredibly morbid ways for UM characters
to find bodies, right, like Unhannibal Man Alive. Like I
remember watching I think it was in the first season,
and I was like, I can't believe they're getting away
with this on network television. Not that I just liked it,

(31:17):
but like, I think there's a point where they find
a human totem pole and it's like twenty people all
like stacked on top of one another. Oh that's right, yeah, yeah,
nice connection to millennium there. And like I'm reading a
book by UM. I believe he's pronouncer named Lauren bukes
or bucas. It's called Broken Monsters. And this isn't a
spoiler for the book. It's like right in the first chapter,

(31:38):
but the premises that they find a body of a
boy that's cut in half and sewn to the body
of a deer. And you think about this stuff in
these grizzly circumstances that we dive into with this fiction,
and there is a celebration of murder of in this
weird artistic way. It's almost like the I mean, one

(31:58):
of the things that's coming out of this period of
time and continues to sort of, you know, be a
point of consideration for the money here. I think it's
like the basic biomechanical nature of the body and uh
and and it seems that, you know, when when you
have these villains and these pieces that are doing elaborate
things to take it apart and rearrange it, it's all
kind of a meditation on on that. You know, you know,

(32:22):
it just occurred to me. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, similar
kind of thing they're going on, the taking the body apart,
putting it back together again and making it walk around.
I will say this about Hannibal. I remember when I
first started watching the TV show and and it became
clear that they were going to just go ahead and
roll out a new, just unrealistically complex murder every week.

(32:42):
I remember thinking, well, that's good. They've embraced it. They've
decided we were going to live in a universe. We're
just gonna go ahead and live in a universe. It's
a little different than the than the reality, and not
try and make the world of Hannibal conformed to it.
It is, Yeah, it is. One of the things that
I love about that show is that it's so over
the top. I keep thinking to myself when I'm watching
in it, like, why would anybody stay in the Baltimore

(33:03):
area with all the like every time you open the
newspaper it's like, oh, we found a human totem poll
of twenty people on the beach yesterday, and like every
week there's some totally bonkers serial killer running around. Yeah,
you would have that whole support groups just for people
who have themselves or have loved ones that have wound
up in some one of these scenarios. Yeah, yeah, I

(33:24):
mean it's grizzly, but like, getting back to the meat
of this, there's something about that that we like, right,
We like getting into no pun intended, the meat of
the story, going along the journey with the detective and
sort of learning how to understand the world from their
journey and from the evidence that they gather. Yeah, I
mean to go back to Canyon Abel. You know, you

(33:46):
need detective God to step in and say what's what.
But in an age when God has less way over
our world view in our daily life, you need somebody else.
And it's all about the drawing the line of morality, right,
That's what God was doing in the Canable story. That's
what we're finding out here, you know. Uh, in a
lot of these cases, like you were telling me about
some examples of Sherlock Holmes, when Holmes does not bring

(34:10):
the criminal in, uh, and and it lets them go
basically because Holmes has decided where the demarcation for morality
is and that you know, this, this or that criminal
don't need to be locked away. Uh. And you get
that as well. Obviously, you know we've we've touched on
it already that there's a there's a part of the
detective that has to be a criminal themselves, has to

(34:30):
sympathize and um, you know, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes
it works, sometimes it doesn't, Like, Oh, have you seen Luther?
I haven't yet. Yeah. Yeah. Another priestly character is that
names because we should probably hit on that before we
break that. You see so many, not all, but so

(34:52):
many detectives whose name whose last names, uh, generally have
something priestly in them, something to do with the clergy. Yeah,
in this case, Luther is in Martin Luther. Yeah, exactly.
And um, you know this is right from the very
first episode that there's a character that is a murderer
that he comes across and he can't exactly prove that

(35:13):
she's a murderer. And over the course of the series
they're sort of friends. She's sort of a fem fatale character,
but they're in there and an antagonist, but they're also
friendly with one another and help one another out. And
it's like he's decided that she's not the kind of
murderer that he needs to be pursuing. Is a fascinating
line that these characters draw in the sand for us.

(35:36):
There's a whole list of characters you could you could
run through that have priestly names, including Dr Priestley from
John Rhodes for forensics. He's a forensic scientist. In the
nine twenties fiction, there's Um John Creasy's commander George Gideon
as in the Bible. Yeah. Um. On TV Today, in
addition to John Luther, we have, of course Adrian Monk. Yeah, right, ones,

(36:00):
right on the head. What about I feel like I
remember reading Alex Crosses character James Patterson's Alex cross there's
Simon Templer, a k the st there's Um on the
TV show Castle. Of course, I think we have with
Frank Is it Frank Castle in the name of the character.
I've never watched that show. It's basically murder, she wrote, Right,

(36:22):
So I haven't watched it either, but I know there's
a character named Castle, and his name is just more
of an idea that if you have a detective, they
have to have something kind of cool in their name. Right,
But there is a Kate Beckett on there, so okay,
I can sort of chalk that up to it. Um. There,
I already mentioned our Scott Baker's disciple Manning. He conforms
to the trope Will Graham of Red Dragon. You could

(36:47):
make an earth case that there's Bill Billy Graham, essentially
Billy Graham Yeah, that before there you go. Yeah, his
writer whose rise to power was right around the time
that Thomas Harris was writing the novels. Yeah. Absolutely. Um,
I can't remember any of the names of the characters
from that Learned Bukes novels. But now I'm going to
think about this when I'm when I'm finishing up that book.

(37:10):
All right, Well, we're gonna take a quick break, and
when we come back, we're gonna talk about the detective
fiction a little more. We're gonna draw in uh scientific study,
some thoughts about how the human mind works and uh
and where the detective fiction stands uh in particularly in
twentieth century culture. Hey, we're back. We're talking about detective fiction.

(37:40):
The fictional detective as a seeker of truth, resolver of conflict,
and a signer of blame. A shaman, a priest, uh
A an individual that stands with one foot in our
world and one in another world, and they can help
us in theory, um, figure out the mysteries that played us.
And so we we teased before the break that we're

(38:03):
gonna touch on some some scientific studies about detective fiction,
and the first one is this interesting article from Psychology
Today written by a guy. It's a Christopher Badcock, I
believe is his name, and it's called the Genius of
Detective Fiction. And he has this theory that there's two
modes of cognition that are involved in our favorite detectives,

(38:26):
right in reading about our favorite detectives, and that sort
of make up these characters. Do you want to hit
on that? Yeah, yeah, he uh you know. Basically, he's
he's looking at two different ways in which our mind work.
One is he calls mentalism, and this is kind of
theory of mind folk psychology, uh uh. And then there's mechanism,
which is more theory of bodies and folk physics. And

(38:50):
the two big examples of the of this to look at,
the ones that the bad Cock drawls out here are
that you look at Sherlock Holmes, right, and there are
obviously no doable autistic tendencies in his character, his lack
of social interests interest, his his you know, the degree
of concentration that he brings to any given case, and

(39:10):
his eye for detail where a crime or a mystery
is concerned. And we do see this more and more,
I feel like in these in these modern uh uh
interpretations of Holmes, these modern explorations of because with this
increased knowledge of of of what autism is like, Yeah,
I think the Holmes is one of those characters that

(39:31):
is probably going to be revisited for centuries. And it
seems like every time we revisit the character, there's more
and more of the psychological understanding that we have through
science brought to the character. And there's I think there's
that infamous line in the new TV show where he
says something like I'm not a psychopath, I'm a highly
functioning sociopath. Uh, something along those lines. Uh, And that

(39:52):
touches on, you know that the second aspect here of
bad Cox's theory, which is that you've got the mechanistic
part but which he sort of likens to being autistic,
and then there's this mentalistic aspect, which he likens to
being on the spectrum of the psychotic disorder. Uh. And
he says that there's, you know, a play between the
two of being on the autistic spectrum and being on

(40:15):
the psychotic spectrum. And for detectives, they in particular detectives
play this out for us, right. Uh. In the general population,
there's this incredibly low rate of people who would have
that combination of mental factors, but we see them in
things like his these are bad Cocks examples John Nash

(40:36):
who just passed away last week. Yes, yeah, Isaac Newton,
and then his other example was Beethoven, that these are
examples of these sort of autistic slash psychotic characters that
that we fall for, and that the detective character plays
this out for us. You know, our actual cognition doesn't

(40:58):
have to go down this route, but you know, I
could imagine, I can easily imagine uh, fiction coming out
in the years to follow where all three of those
guys solve crimes. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, that's a really
good idea. Together they travel, Yeah, yeah, I mean the
cool thing about Badcock's paper is that, you know, you

(41:19):
really shows that there's there's the way the human mind works,
and then these two different extremes. Like that's where we
tend to position our detectives as as is stream modes
of human cognition. Yeah, and if they fall too far
to one side, they're not effective detectives. Right, So, like, uh,
take the Will Graham character for example, Like he's constantly
being pushed further towards the edge of psychotic and rather

(41:42):
than being somewhat in the middle between psychotic and autistic. Uh.
And that's when he you know, he's at his worst,
he's not able to catch the killer. Um. But on
the other end of it, I'm trying to think like
Holmes is probably the one that comes to mind as
being the one that leans heavily towards the autist stick side, right, Yeah,
I feel like he was the best example of that. Um.

(42:04):
And on the other end of the spectrum, Batcock brings
out Agatha Christie's Miss Marple example, but I've never read
Miss Marple. Yeah, I have not. I speak to that. Huh.
I'm trying to think of other examples here. Where would
Lebowski fall, because he has the same Yeah, that's true.

(42:24):
Lebowski is we're referring to the Cohen Brothers movie The
Big Lebowski. Uh yeah, Lebowski would be definitely more towards
the psychotic end, I think, right, He's he doesn't have
a particular focus or dedication to anything whatsoever. But he
does have a disregard for social conventions, does Yeah. And
and that's that's something you do see, isn't that? Isn't that?

(42:47):
The theory I've heard is that Lebowski is a like
scene for seeing adaptation of Chandler's The Big Sleet. You know,
I never really thought about it, supposedly. I think I've
heard that rumor somewhere. I'm sure one of listeners will
debunk that idea. But I remember somebody telling me that
one time. All right, Well, moving along to a little
more science. Um, this this next study comes down to

(43:11):
a basic question. Who doesn't love a good who done
it right? Well, in theory, nobody right, Like I would think,
like a great who done it? Like? That's that's what
you want in your detective story. You don't want to
call the ending like right from the beginning like that's
always the worst, right, especially if you're if you don't
see the ending coming and you're watching say detective show

(43:31):
with somebody who does you like, Oh, it's the wife
that killed him? Right? This is like the original spoilers
before the internet was really kicking around. Don't tell me
who it is. I you know, I haven't gotten to
the last page yet. There's those people who do like
to skip ahead, read the last page and then read
the rest of the book though, And I think this
study touches upon that, right. Yeah, indeed, this is a
two thousand six Ohio State University study that they conducted

(43:54):
in conjunction with the Hanover School of Music and Drama
in Germany. Um, and they looked at particularly, They're curious
to see how people with low self esteem reacted to
crime and detective stories that either confirmed their suspicions in
the end or threw them for a curve. Yeah. And

(44:15):
so this is essentially the methodology of the study, right.
There were eighty four German college students that were their subjects,
and they all took these personality assessments basically um self
reporting on what their self esteem levels were. Uh. And
then they were each assigned to read a short one
page mystery which was called Murder because of Lust or Greed,

(44:40):
which is a very very German title for a detective story.
I'm sure it sounds a lot sexier in German itself. Everything, yeah, um,
But the without getting into whatever the story was about, essentially,
these students were given three different versions of the story,
one in which the suspects are equally likely to have
commit of the crime. The second version hints that one

(45:03):
of the suspects was more likely than the other to
be the killer. And then the third one hinted that
one suspect was more likely to be the murderer. But
the end, the killer turns out to be done, Done
done somebody that you're not even aware of. Is the
Scooby Doo twist, right, somebody pulls a mask off. And
what they found was that of these self reporting students,

(45:25):
people with low self esteem rated the surprise ending as
less enjoyable than the confirmation ending, So they didn't like
the surprise if they had low self esteem, whereas the
people who reported that they had high self esteem reacted
the opposite way. They really liked the surprise and they

(45:45):
didn't like knowing ahead of time who committed the crime.
Uh yeah, this is a weird one to wrap my
head around, because I mean, I guess the best I
can imagine is like try and put myself in that that,
you know, in the mindset of someone who's like, had
a really add date work and you know, just everything is, uh,
everything's everything's a disaster, just one after the other all

(46:07):
day and then you get home and you read your
detective story. And maybe there's an argument to be made
that that this individual reads a detective story and if
and if he's able to guess the outcome correctly. He's like, well,
I got one, yeah, exactly. Finally something went right for me. Yeah, yeah, No,
I can understand that. But jeez, I mean, no matter

(46:29):
how bad my day gets. And I'm not saying that
this is an indicative of me having a particularly high
self esteem or anything like that, but I like the twist.
You know, I'm not advocating for an m Night Shamalan
twist to every single ending of the story. But I
like to be surprised. I like to not know where
the story is going. I think like, as somebody who

(46:49):
consumes a ton of fictional entertainment, you get to a
point where you you start recognizing the narrative beats, and
you know, a lot of times you often know where
it's going. Um, So it's always surprising. I mentioned your
detective earlier. It's always surprising when something leads to a
direction that you weren't expecting. You know, I'm glad that
you mentioned the beats. Um. It reminds me of an

(47:12):
example from Lucha Libre where someone someone brought up It
was a discussion about like big mask versus Mask. Luja
Libre matches in particular, and someone brought up was that
they said, well, you always know who's gonna win, like
because generally the good guy wins. Really yeah, the good
guy wins and the bad guy loses his mask. Um
and uh, anyway, someone is saying, well, there's no surprise

(47:34):
here because this is the story always in the same way.
And then um, someone countered by saying that it's there's
a mythic quality in that that when the story always
confirms conforms to a certain pattern and a certain mythic story,
then there's comfort in that because the story, every story
is important in in in the way that it confirmed

(47:54):
conforms to a pre existing narrative. Yeah, and I can
see the there's a pleasure to be had there as well,
right Uh. In in your example, like you get home
from work at the end of a terrible day and
maybe you don't need any more surprises. Maybe you just
want to have something familiar be there for you. It's
like a blanket. Yeah, but it's like a thunder sure, thundersure. Yeah.

(48:19):
But but then I mean again to your point, it's like,
even if I've had a bad day, I feel like
I would want the story to just suck me away
and take me into a place I can't they escape
as a mask. Yeah, but according to their study. Now,
I do have to say here that you know, when
I read this, I thought, well, the evidence here is
a little loosey goosey, and I'd like to see some
more research done here. I mean, in particular, they've got

(48:41):
this very subjective group of students that they're looking at.
They're all college students, they're all German, they're all of
a particular age, right, and um, they're all also self
reporting on their self esteem. So I think it would
be interesting to see a study where there was like
more of a quantitative psychological assessment going on here, and
then you compare that to their results of you know,

(49:01):
reading the story. But um, again, you know, this is
a very subjective world of research here. I agree. I agree. Now,
another role for the detective we thought we'd mentioned here
is that of a subcultural liaison. And this idea comes
to us from theory and practice of classical detective fiction

(49:21):
by Jerome Delamater and Ruth Pragazi of Hofstra University. I
would have to say neither of those last names particularly
good detective names. Yeah, I think I would have to
go back to bad Cock who mentioned earlier, yeah, that
he would be an excellent detective. He probably changed his
name just for that piece. Not very religious sounding though,

(49:43):
And what do we mean by subcultural liaison though? Well, um,
you know you think of any crime story, right, and
it involves like sword pass right and dark secrets, uh,
and some sort of convergence between the normal world and
some sort of a subworld. So you know, we already
talked about the sho and having one foot in ours
and one in you know, the realm of the spirits.

(50:03):
And the detective of course has one foot in ours
and one and uh at least in the criminal element, right,
and least through investigations conducted there, if not some portion
of his life existing there. So the detective often serves
as this, uh, this vehicle through which we get to
explore a subculture that we would otherwise just not be

(50:26):
privy to. Yeah, I mean when you think about it,
especially for I think a certain sect of people who
love detective stories, right, there's this m M vicarious like
toe dipping into the world of the criminal, right, it's
the safe way to do so. And um, I mean

(50:47):
I'll admit it myself, like I don't particularly have like
a dark criminal past. But I like watching shows where
I get like some sort of a hint at what
criminal activity is like in America, you know, even though
it's fictional and it's obviously like way off base, and
I'm thinking, like, the closest version of this is like
The Wire, Right, So if you're watching David Simon's The Wire,

(51:09):
and you're like, now, I have an understanding for drug
culture in Baltimore, and that's probably the closest you're going
to get to accuracy. And even that is, you know,
I believe, highly fictionalized. Yeah, but still to the you know,
to the average viewer, they suddenly know a little more
about the reality of that than they would have. In
particular that subculture of being African American in Baltimore and

(51:32):
living in a neighborhood that's immersed within the drug scene. Yeah,
now that which is not something that I in particular
have access to now, you know. Of course, that's not
to say that every detective story is going to really
give you an authentic feel for the subculture. Like, you know,
detective investigates a murder in a dungeon doesn't mean you're
going to end up with a better understanding of what

(51:54):
b D s M culture is all about. You're probably
gonna have a very skewed, uh idea very sensational idea
of what it consists of. That's probably part of the
safety though, too write, is that like it, it's just
far enough, it's arms reach away enough that it's not
you know, it's not entering into our own lives, but
it gives us it's back to the shawn again, it
gives us a broader understanding of the world. But then

(52:17):
I guess when you get used to your your shamanistic
detective taking you into these worlds, you maybe get a
little more comfortable each time. And so we end up
with this growing trend of the detective fiction allowing us
safe journeys into these varying worlds. Often uh times, you'll
also end up getting to take these journeys with a
little inside help from the the author of themselves. Um.

(52:39):
It's been pointed out that since detective fiction, even in
its early goings, was more about fun and entertainment, it
meant that writing detective fiction was was more open to
female writers. Yeah, right, And obviously Agatha Christie, you know,
at the beginning of the twentieth century having such a
surge of popularity was unusual. Huh. So now I'm thinking

(53:03):
about like these examples of detective fiction that we like
that we're you know, we were talking about earlier at
the top, and how they're sort of giving us access
to subcultures. I mean, so this, this Broken Monsters book
that I'm reading right now is very much about like, uh,
post industrial Detroit. It's set in the present day. It's
very heavily linked to social media, uh and the art

(53:24):
world of Detroit in particular, and so it's giving you
this access and view into this world of you know,
I I don't have any connection to that particular scene
at all. Uh So I guess I'm I'm living it
vicariously through the detective who's who's scurrying about the streets
of Detroit trying to solve this guy who's sewing people's

(53:46):
bodies to animals. Yeah, or even think of the first
season of True Detective, So much of that concerned some
very authentic feeling scenes of rural Louisiana like that was
It's far different from you know, movie Louisiana, like Hollywood
Louisi entity. You got stay on a true blood, right
or or any given a bit of fiction that takes
place in in Louisiana or New Orleans. That was one

(54:07):
of the things I loved about that show so much
was that Louisiana was a character in that show, and
it really made me think about the Southern Gothic genre
in a very different way than I ever have before. Uh.
And one of my favorite bits and all of True
Detective and this isn't a spoiler at all, is we're
set in the mid nineties. These detectives are trying to

(54:29):
figure out a murder and they pull over at a
roadside Vietnamese fast food place in Louisiana and just have
a quick snack. And there's no commentary on it whatsoever.
It's just there, and it's something you wouldn't expect, right,
You wouldn't think, like, oh, rural Louisiana is going to
just have these roadside Vietnamese places. But the author's familiarity

(54:54):
with that region obviously came through there and it was
a nice glimpse. Yeah. So with detective fiction, you you
and are kind of skirting sensationalistic displays, but you're also
getting this at least a little insight into other social classes,
economic divisions, lifestyle choices, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, and when
you get into international um detective fiction too, that often

(55:18):
allows you to, you know, immerse yourself in a different
time and place. Well, certainly when you speak of time,
you know, any kind of historical detective stories, uh, such
as say the Gordion Honest books that take place in
ancient Rome, you get to explore these different times in
places and characters, but with the sort of the safe structure,
the kind of enclosing shark cage of the of the genre. Yeah,

(55:39):
you know. I mean this explains I think partially why
we as Americans love British Victorian era detective stories. Right,
There's something about that era that we keep coming back
to over and over and over again and again, Like
the detective story gives us the shark cage to kind
of immerse ourselves in there. I don't think anybody in

(56:00):
the present day would would be particularly thrilled with the
everyday amenities of that world, but you know that it's
it's attractive to look back to. Yeah, I mean, it
instantly gives you that that kind of comfort level. Like
if I were to say, hey, let's go see a
movie about ancient Babylon. Let's go see a detective story,
a detective movie set in ancient Babylon. Like instantly, I

(56:23):
have a little more idea of what I'm expecting with
the sort of cultural flavoring surrounding it. Yeah, absolutely, I
really like this idea. I'm going to be looking out
for this a lot more now. I'm thinking of, like, uh, um,
what is this movie that it's a West Craven movie
and I can't remember the title of it. You might

(56:44):
know it. It's about an Amish community where there's these
strange murders happening, and the X Files revisited it as well,
but there's a you know this detectives trying to solve
murders in an Amish community, and there's there's a sort
of supernatural bent to it as well. But it's very
much one of those like here's how the world of
the Amish work, you know, like an introduction to it

(57:05):
through the detective story. You know the tropes, you know
the beats of the detective story, but the setting is
something that we're unfamiliar with. So given the role of
the detective and fiction, and given the power of the
sub genre and the and the kind and the ultimately
the subversive nature of it. Uh, it's understandable to see

(57:26):
that it has it has been banned. There has been,
there have been governmental crackdowns on detective fiction in recent history. Yeah,
especially when you consider what we're talking about earlier, that
most detectives are somewhere on the side. They're outsiders of
institutional authority, right, and so it makes sense that governments

(57:46):
and institutional authority would would frown upon that right and
and want there to be more respect for their institutions,
for their laws, etcetera. Yeah, Stalin banned the detective story
and the restrictions remained in effect until after his death
in nineteen fifty three. Uh. Italy followed a similar pattern.

(58:07):
Um and uh. And this is interesting to the German approach. Um. So,
one of the most influential authors back in the the
nineteen twenties was the guy named by the name of
Eric Costner and h. When the Nazis came to power,
they burned all of his books, but they didn't ban
the detective genre outright. Instead, they they decided to sort

(58:30):
of fold it into their propaganda and they only allow
detective stories um that depicted honest and highly competent policemen
that were upholding the rule of law. Really, so I'm
just imagining, like, Okay, here's our Hollywood pitch. Right, we
walk into the meeting, there's this big long table of
Hollywood executives, and we go, Okay, it's a detective story.

(58:51):
But the detective is an s S officer, and they're like, Oh,
that's that's great. He's gonna be conflicted, and he's gonna
he's gonna be like a good German trapped in a
awful system. He said, no, no, he's just really good.
He's a flat out Nazi. Yeah. It doesn't sound very
interesting at the end of the day, but you know,
a lot of these stories that are designed to support

(59:13):
you know, authoritarian regimes are not either. Well, it kind
of brings us back to the forensic uh slant in
the sort of modern police procedurals right in your purest form. Again,
it's about a system and a science that works. Yeah, exactly,
and and a lot of those I mean, I have
to admit, like I'm not a huge fan of police procedurals.

(59:34):
I can understand that there's a quality of uh. It's
kind of like what we were talking about earlier that
that quality of familiarity right where you throw on an
episode of Law and Order and you're like, I know
how this is gonna go, right, Like the beats are
the same every episode, and and for the most part
you know where it's heading. It's a Law and Order
and Scooby Doo have a lot in common that way.

(59:55):
But but however, you know there is something to be
said here, like the characters in Law and Order buying large. Again,
I'm not a huge fan of the show, but from
my understanding, like their lawyers and police officers, right, and
they're working within the system to solve the crimes that
they solve. And then you know and shows such as
like C S I or jeez, what is it? N
C I S Is that the military one? Okay? Uh,

(01:00:17):
they're using science to solve these crimes within these institutions,
but we pretty much know where they're going, you know,
at the end of at the end of the day,
there aren't a lot of spins on it. I think
there was like one C. S I where like Quentin
Tarantino did a directed it and wrote it, I think,
and it was like one of the guys got buried
alive or something that was the twist. All right, Well,

(01:00:40):
there you have it. Um. You know, I just want
to close with a quick quote from literary critic Edmund Wilson. UM.
And this is from a PC that he wrote in
The New York Or in nineteen forty four, where he
was asking the same question, why do we love detective fiction? Um?
And he says the following. Yet the detective story has
kept its hold, and even in the two decades between

(01:01:01):
the Great War, has become more popular than ever before.
And there is I believe a deep reason for this.
The world during those years was written by an all
pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster,
which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it
never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility who
had committed the original crime and who was going to

(01:01:23):
commit the next one. That murder, which always in the novels,
occurs at an unexpected moment when the investigation is well underway,
which may happen as in one of the Nero Wolf
stories right in the Great Detective's office. Everybody is suspected
in turn, and the streets are full of lurking agents
whose allegiances we cannot know. Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe,
and then suddenly the murderer is spotted and relief. He

(01:01:46):
is not, after all, a person like you or me.
He is a villain known to the trade as George Gruesome,
and he has been caught by an infallible power, the supercilious,
an omniscient detective who knows exactly how to fix the guilt.
All right, Hey, if you want to check out more
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over

(01:02:06):
to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the
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you name it, And if you have any thoughts about
the detective genre, let us know about your favorite detective
stories how you think they fit into these ideas we've
talked about today, Shaman's subcultural liaisons bands all of this stuff.

(01:02:28):
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