Th D t t v R d r: N rr t v t nd R d n n ptn D t t v F t n

Peter Hühn

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 33, Number 3, Fall 1987, pp.451-466 (Article)

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THE DETECTIVE AS READER: NARRATIVITY ANDREADING CONCEPTS IN DETECTIVE FICTION

rtfrPeter Huhn

Detective fiction, particularly of the classical formula, seems to beunique among narrative genres in that it thematizes narrativity itself asa problem, a procedure, and an achievement. In fact, its very constitu-tion as a genre is based on the complicated employment of certain nar-rative strategies: the point of a classical detective novel typically consistsin reconstructing a hidden or lost story (that is, the crime); and the pro-cess of reconstruction (that is, the detection), in its turn, is also usuallyhidden in essential respects from the reader. Furthermore, as I shall at-tempt to show in detail, narrativity is inscribed in detective fiction in yettwo other forms. The stories that are narrated in detective novels canprofitably be described as stories of writing and reading insofar as theyare concerned with authoring and deciphering "plots." And ultimately,the detective novel hinges on the social effects that the concealment andthe "publication" of a particular story, namely that of the crime, willhave. Thus detective fiction affords clear examples of the possible socialdimensions of narrativity, and the history of the detective genre is marked,on one level, by growing doubts about the possibility of telling the story.

Modem Fiction Studies, Volume 33, Number 3, Autumn 1987. Copyright © by Purdue Research Foundation.All rights to reproduction in any form reserved.

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The plot of the classical detective novel comprises two basicallyseparate stories—the story of the crime (which consists of action) and thestory of the investigation (which is concerned with knowledge).1 In theirnarrative presentation, however, the two stories are intertwined. The firststory (the crime) happened in the past and is—insofar as it is hidden—absent from the present; the second story (the investigation) happens in thepresent and consists of uncovering the first story. On the concrete levelof plot and setting, the link between the two stories is established in thefollowing stages. Most classical detective novels start out with a communityin a state of stable order. Soon a crime (usually a murder) occurs, whichthe police are unable to clear up. The insoluble crime acts as a destabiliz-ing event, because the system of norms and rules regulating life in thecommunity has proved powerless in one crucial instance and is thereforediscredited. In other words, the narrative incapability on the part ofsociety's official agents, their inability to discover and tell the story ofthe crime, thus threatens the validity of the established order. At thispoint the detective takes over the case, embarks on a course of thoroughinvestigations, and finally identifies the criminal, explaining his solutionat length. Thus, through the development of the second story, the absentfirst story is at last reconstructed in detail and made known. By rein-tegrating the aberrant event, the narrative reconstruction restores thedisrupted social order and reaffirms the validity of the system of norms.

Conventionally, the coupling of these two stories is presented to thereader in a specifically involved manner (invented by Poe and standard-ized by Doyle). Employing Gérard Genette's and Seymour Chatman'sdistinction between story and discourse, one can define the narrative organiza-tion of a classical detective novel as follows.2 The usual constellation of

story and discourse (the abstractable préexistent sequence of events andacts versus its mediation in a narrative) occurs twice over: the story of thecrime is mediated in the discourse of the detective's investigation; andthe story of the detective's investigation, in its turn, is mediated in thenarrator's discourse (for instance in Dr. Watson's uninformed written ac-count of Holmes's detection). In both cases the story is hidden for themost part so that the reader is doubly puzzled—trying to make out themysterious crime story by way of the almost equally mystifying detectionstory.

â– See Tzvetan Todorov (42-52) and Dennis Porter (29-30).'The strict distinction between story and discourse has been questioned, for instance, by Barbara

Herrnstein Smith. However problematic this general postulate may be in certain respects, classical detectivefiction is based on the premise that a story and its presentation in discourse are distinguishable and thatextracting the "true" story from the (invariably distorting) medium of discourse is a feasible as wellas valuable enterprise. Of course, this is part of the genre's ideology: when the detective finally narratesthe "true story" of the crime, thus correcting its previous misrepresentation in discourse, the listenersare presented with merely another version of discourse (which, however, purports to be congruent withthe story itself).

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In spite of writers' preoccupation with surprising variation, the ar-rangement of narrative elements is fundamentally the same in the ma-jority of classical detective novels.3 In fact, the genre has been remarkablefor the rigidity of its conventional structures—especially during the 1920sand '30s, when the conventions were frequently canonized as explicit"rules" (for instance, by S. S. Van Dine or Ronald Knox). It is interestingto note that such a narrowly defined plot-structure, which does not ap-pear in need of interpretation, because no mysteries or ambiguities re-main unresolved, should nevertheless have elicited a large variety ofdivergent interpretations and thus have proved highly polyvalent. Mostcritics writing about this genre seem to feel compelled to postulatehypotheses about the causes of its wide popularity and the motivationof its readers. Each of these hypotheses inevitably presupposes a specificinterpretation of the genre structures and is ultimately based on placingthe text in a specific context. Socially oriented critics, for example, suchas Stephen Knight, view the detective plot in a socioeconomic contextand generally interpret the crime as a threat to the privileges of the middleclass: the private detective, by successfully uncovering the criminal,demonstrates the efficacy of one central class-value—bourgeoisindividualism—and thus confirms the ability of the social system topreserve itself. The latent anxieties of the middle-class readers about thestability of their society are thereby alleviated. Howard Haycraft, in con-trast to such a socioeconomic perspective, reads the detective novel withina political and constitutional context: the legal requirement of rational,verifiable proof of guilt before the conviction of any criminal, which hesees exemplified in the detective's methods of investigation, indicates theadvocacy of democratic principles as the central meaning of the genre.Consequently, Haycraft postulates a strong interest in the maintenanceof such principles as the underlying reading motivation.

Within this field of polyvalent interpretations I should like to elaboratea partly new reading, without, however, claiming a superior status forit. My aim is primarily to demonstrate that the formula of detective fic-tion, when viewed in the context of narrative and reading theory, assumesadditional consistency and significance. Moreover, the analogy of the detec-tive's activities to sign-interpretation, meaning-formation, and story-tellingmay provide new clues not only to reasons for the popularity of the genrewith particular groups of readers but also to the social and psychologicalfunction of narrative in certain sections of our culture.

Described in the terminology of reading, the double plot-structure(the combination of the two stories) can be outlined in the followingmanner.4 The initial crime—as long as it remains unsolved—functionsas an uninterpretable sign, that is, one that resists integration into the

3See John G. Cawelti's typification of the classical formula (80-105).4See Glenn W. Most and William Stowe's collection, especially their articles.

DETECTIVE AS READER 453

established meaning-system of the community. Because it consists of thedestruction of life and tends to discredit the validity of the system, it can-not be ignored. Therefore it becomes vital for the community to uncoverthe hidden meaning and—by reintegrating the sign—to defuse it. Theprogress of the plot (that is, the second story) is then presented as a suc-cession of attempts to ascribe meaning to the sign by finding the missinglinks to the accepted patterns of reality. This interpretive linking invariablytakes the form of a narrative, thus employing one of the most fundamen-tal devices for generating coherence and meaning—telling the story of thegenesis of the crime. This notion of the "genesis of the crime" can besaid to imply with particular clarity the essential components of any nar-rative as a highly organized as well as organizing structure: origin, agent,causal connection, temporal sequence, aim—or in the (incomplete) handyformula often cited in detective novels: the motive, the means, and theopportunity.

The attempt to read the mystery in this way presupposes the existenceof a text. According to a general convention of the genre, every murdererinescapably leaves traces: the murder story is always in some way im-printed "on the world." (The old dream of the perfect murder—that is,a murder that would leave no readable signs—again and again provesillusory.) In order to prevent detection, the criminal suppresses as manytraces as possible, and those that cannot be completely suppressed (forinstance, the dead body itself) he manipulates so that they point to nocoherent story at all (the crime then appears a "mystery") or to a dif-ferent story (suicide, accident, murder by some other person). In a mannerof speaking, the criminal writes the secret story of his crime into everyday"reality" in such a form that its text is partly hidden, partly distortedand misleading. But although he tries to subject the whole text to hisconscious and, as it were, artistic control, some signs usually escape hisattention and inadvertently express their "true" meaning (his criminalauthorship). So, even if the criminal as a skillful author has managedto rewrite the story of his crime in the coherent form of a different story,these unmanageable signs tend to disrupt the appearance and create amystery.

From the perspective of the detective, the traces left by the criminalappear as "clues," possible indicators of the hidden story of the crime.Such clues are facts or phenomena connected with the circumstances ofthe murder—footprints, objects found near or on the dead body, thepresence or absence of persons at the time of the murder, and so on.The assumption of, and the search for, a hidden story inscribed in every-day reality has the effect of transforming the world of the novel into aconglomeration of potential signs. All phenomena may lose their usual,automatically ascribed meanings and signify something else: a curried dishfor supper might be a cover for a poison, a dark suit could signify a waiter454 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

or a gentleman, a person observed at a door might just have come out orbe about to enter or may merely pretend to do one or the other. Thus, byeffectively deautomatizing signification and making things "strange," theenigma of the murder endows the everyday world with a rich potentialityof unsuspected meanings. In fact, the world presents the (as yet) highlyambivalent text of the hidden story of the crime. And the difficulties ofreading it properly are due to a threefold indeterminacy: at the outsetneither the limits of the text, nor the set of signs constituting it, nor thecode in which it is written are certain.

This textual indeterminacy is, however, only a temporary illusioncaused by the lack of pertinent information on the detective's part. Histask consists in delimitating the text by separating the relevant signs fromthe mass of nonrelevant facts around it, until he is finally able to reducethe polyvalence to the one true meaning, the true story of the crime.For it is an essential premise of the classical formula that there ultimatelyexists such a determinate meaning.

The main section of a detective novel, the protracted middle phaseof the plot (after the discovery of the dead body), is taken up by thesystematic development of the detective's interpretive operations. Typically,detection means selecting and grouping signifiers and assigning varioussignifieds to them. And these operations are guided by hypotheses aboutwhat might have happened, that is, by trying out various frames ofreference, which could confer temporal and causal coherence and mean-ing on the heterogeneous and contradictory conglomerate of facts confront-ing the detective. The continual rearrangement and reinterpretation ofclues is, of course, the basic method of reading and understanding un-familiar texts—commonly called the "hermeneutic circle," which involvesdevising interpretive patterns to integrate signs and then using new signsto modify and adjust these patterns accordingly. One essential factor inthe detective's eventual success is his ability to question preconceived no-tions and break through automatized modes of perception: because theclues normally appear in suggestive contexts that automatically trigger(erroneous) assumptions about their significance, the master-detective con-sciously frees himself from such suggestions, thus being able to formulatean unorthodox interpretation of the mystery. In Agatha Christie's TheMurder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), for instance, Poirot rejects the automaticassumption (at that time more "natural" and therefore automatic thantoday) that overhearing a person's voice necessarily indicates that he ispresent and still alive—an insight that permits Poirot to arrive at a new(and correct) reading of the case.

Although the detective novel thus puts a premium on innovative inter-pretations, in the final analysis innovation is only valued as the beststrategy for discovering the truth. For ultimately it is always the adequacyof the reading, and not its creative quality, that is of paramount impor-DETECTIVE AS READER 455

tance. That this should be so follows from the premise that there is oneand only one true meaning, as well as from the social function this mean-ing possesses: the crime and its solution concern the basic order systemregulating the life of the community in the book, and these systems nor-mally cannot tolerate indeterminacy (as is already evident from the urgefelt to solve the mystery in the first place). Accordingly, the conventionof the genre requires that the adequacy of the detective's reading is tested—he does this by producing internal or external evidence, that is, by evinc-ing its logical coherence and by obtaining some new empirical proof.Readings have to justify themselves on the basis of a rational process ofproof-gathering, and it is only this procedure of rational validation thatestablishes the public power of the detective's reading. The fact that inclassical detective novels the evidence is frequently of an extraordinarilyintricate and inferential nature and would, therefore, hardly prove con-clusive and convincing in a real court is in itself an indication of thepremise underlying the formula: the absolute belief in the power and ef-ficacy of the verbal construct of a story as such and in the very rationalityof argumentation as the principle governing the process of narrativereconstruction.

The main difficulty of the reading process is occasioned by thecriminal's attempts to prevent the detective from deciphering the truemeaning of his text. This is, basically, a contest between an author anda reader about the possession of meaning, each of them wishing to secureit for himself. (The contest within the novel is repeated on a higher levelbetween the novelist and the actual reader.) The reading process is fur-ther complicated by the fact that there are always other characters involvedwho are also guilty of something that they attempt to hide—the suspects.Typically, these characters also tamper with the text of everyday reality,changing or rearranging signs so as to conceal or transform the appearanceof their guilty little secrets. Thus the text is revealed as having more authorsthan one and, consequently, as containing more meanings than one—allof which can be classified as stories and are, in fact, recounted as separatestories in the end. So, before the detective can read the criminal's mean-ing correctly, he has first to disentangle and eliminate the various secon-dary meanings and stories.

The multiplication of authors and meanings is matched, as it were,by an analogous multiplication of readers. The detective has to competewith one or more other readers, who, however, prove to be incompetent—the police. Because they are, as the public investigators of the case, of-ficially authorized as readers by society, the amateur detective is frequentlyhampered in his readings. The rivalry normally develops along the follow-ing lines. By accepting the superficial appearance of a coherent meaningas the solution (thereby often succumbing to the suggestions purposely im-planted by the criminal), the police prematurely set out to close the text.456 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

In practical terms, the result of formulating an incorrect meaning andmisconstruing the story is often the arrest of the wrong person, whichdemonstrates that incompetent readings can have grave socialconsequences—at least in the novel. At this stage the detective's inter-pretive operations ordinarily aim at reopening the text. He destroys thepremature closure imposed by the police—disproving tacit assumptions,discovering new clues, and generally reconstituting the multivalence ofeveryday reality, if only temporarily. For in the end the detective's con-tinuous reinterpretations of the clues are arrested, too, and he presentshis own closure—in the form of the narration of the first story, whichrestores the coherence of social reality in an unexpected manner (by in-criminating the least suspected person), but without basically modifyingthe familiar structure of the reality.

Now, this second story, the progressive reading of the first story ofthe crime, is mediated in a manner that also presents it as an act of writing.To begin with, this literally holds good for a narrative technique verycommon in classical detective fiction—the employment of an individualizednarrator, usually the detective's friend or assistant, who is actually engagedin chronicling the course of the detection. Poe invented this device, andthe most notable example is, of course, Doyle's Dr. Watson. This deviceproduces an interesting reduplication of the interplay of reading and writingmotifs.5 Whereas in the first story the criminal "hero" acts both as theauthor and the writer of the text of his crime, there is a split betweenroles in the second story—between the detective hero (as a reader) andhis companion as the chronicler (who can neither properly read for himself,nor even follow the detective's reading). Structurally, the companion'sunenlightened narration of the detective's reading causes the reproduc-tion, on a higher level, of the discrepancy between the surface of the text(the signifiers) and the hidden meaning (the signifieds) with which thedetective himself is confronted. This narrative device thus serves to stress

5The functions frequently adduced for this device—setting off the detective's brilliance and mediatingbetween ordinary reader and super-detective—thus appear to be incomplete and somewhat superficial.The effect of doubling the mystery of reading seems to be a more specific explanation for the popularityof this narrative device during the classical period and is more in keeping with the often self-referentiallyliterary character of the detective novel. An interesting further variation of this constellation, by theway, occurs in Rex Stout's novels. The cooperation between Nero Wolfe, the immobile brain, and Ar-chie Goodwin, the practical tool, implies a partly modified ascription of writing and reading activities.Nero Wolfe acts, of course, as the reader of the crime story, but instead of writing the story of hisdetection himself, he dictates it to his coadjutor, Archie Goodwin. Archie thus functions twice as a non-comprehending writer: he executes in practical respects Wolfe's story of investigation, which leads tothe apprehension of the criminal, etc., and he records and narrates the story of the detection, withoutfully understanding these stories. What this amounts to (especially the first of these functions) is theseparation of authorial imagination (Nero Wolfe) and writing utensil (Archie Goodwin). Interestingly,this separation may occur on the criminal's side, too—as a means of committing the perfect murder:if the actual killer is separate from, and in no way connected with, the planning criminal, a mere utensilemployed by the hidden author, the criminal cannot be detected, because his authorship cannot be tracedthrough clues. An example is found in Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game (1974), which starts off withthis scheme and which narrates the planning, execution, and ultimate failure of the separation betweencriminal author and writing utensil.

DETECTIVE AS READER 457

the fact that the detective's reading activities also constitute a text, a storyabove the first story—the story of the detection, of which he functionsas the writer. In a more fundamental sense than indicated above, thedetective's reading can be described as an act of writing. Because the Dr.Watson-figure fails to understand how the detective progresses in his in-vestigation, the text of this second story (as printed in the book) for themost part conceals the true state of affairs with regard to the investigation,which places us, the actual readers of the novel, in a position analogousto that of the detective: we are confronted with a signifying "surface"whose signified meaning we are meant to find out by reading.6

So the printed text of the novel actually combines two different texts:first, the narration of the detective's reading activities (seen from the out-side); and, second, as the detective's reading assignment, the text of every-day reality "made strange" by the mystery of the crime—complete withall the potentially meaningful signs, clues, and red herrings. That thislast-mentioned text should be completely included in the novel was express-ly stipulated in the list of the rules drawn up by authors in the interwarperiod.7 This simultaneous presentation of the two texts has a numberof consequences. The text of the novel can be said to have two authors(at least): the criminal (who wrote the original mystery story) and thedetective (who writes the reconstruction of the first story—chronicled inthe process, for the most part uncomprehendingly, by yet another writer,as it were, his companion). As a result, the verbal structure of the textis ambiguous: the detective's progress and the criminal's story are con-cealed and decipherable, invisible and visible. And the two texts have dif-ferent readers—the detective, the Dr. Watson-figure, and us, the readers,who by comparing the original text of the mystery with the story of thedetective's reading attempts may try to compete with him. Moreover,one can say that in the figure of the detective, the novel formulates itsown meaning. His final explanation—disclosing the criminal's story aswell as the history of his detection—closes the meaning of both texts ef-fectively and thus collapses all levels of writing and reading, stabilizingthe meaning of all signs. And with this complete closure the novel nolonger contains any interest for the reader. Because the mystery was initial-ly defined as the meaning of the text, no relevance remains when themeaning becomes extractable and the mystery is removed (the book thenleaves nothing to be desired). Herein seems to lie the reason why people

6On the other hand, to be sure, one has to mention differences in the distorted presentation ofthese two stories and therefore in the difficulty of the reading task. The crime story as it appears distortedin the form of clues, etc. lacks both the temporal order of its elements and their causal concatenation,whereas the detection story in its recording by the detective's coadjutor presents the elements in theirchronological order, omitting only their causal connection. Besides, the delimitation of the crime storyis concealed for the detective (which clues belong to the criminal's story, which to other stories or tonone at all), whereas the detection story is normally well marked off from other actions in the novel.All this seems to indicate that the task of the novel reader is easier than that of the detective, whohas the advantage, however, of possessing a far superior reading competence.

7See Ronald A. Knox's rules one and eight, and S. S. Van Dine's rules one and two.

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normally do not reread detective novels—the text has consumed itself.Rereading a detective novel is, however, a revealing experience with respectto the structures outlined: one can then clearly distinguish between thetexts and authors and read the two stories (that of the crime and thatof its detection) separately and at the same time.

Agatha Christie's famous novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd providesan interesting example of both an extreme deviation from, and a closeadherence to, the narrative scheme of the classical detective novel. Christieidentifies the central agents of both stories with each other: the murderer(the author of the first story) is also the narrator of the second story(Poirot's investigation of the murder). The murderer's intention in nar-rating the second story is to chronicle, for once, a failure on the partof the great detective. In other words, the criminal tells the second storyto prove the unreadability of the first. The fundamental self-contradictioninherent in his intention, namely, to make public that the meaning ofthe first text can never be made public, seems to be the root of his even-tual self-defeat. The course of the novel demonstrates that he is forcedto record his own failure in keeping his authorship of the first story hid-den: that is, he is obliged to chronicle yet another of the great detective'striumphs. Skillfully lured by Poirot, the criminal inadvertently conformsmore and more closely to the conventional role of the Dr. Watson-figureas the chronicler of the second text. He is just as unable to see throughthe detective's reading operations, which here refer to himself, and final-ly he is even compelled to eulogize Poirot's ingeniousness in finding outthat he—the narrator—was the murderer.

This is an intensified version of the central contest acted out in allclassical formula novels, the contest between author (criminal) and reader(detective) about the possession of the meaning of the (first) story. As(almost) always in the genre, the author's intention ultimately proves in-effectual. The reader, who is no ordinary reader, of course, but a super-reader, always succeeds in extracting the meaning from the resistant text.This is doubly evident in this particular novel, where the author of thefirst story endeavors to gain control also over the second story by actingas its narrator and, indeed, to prevent that second story from ever beingrealized in the first place. Paradoxically, this relation between reader andauthor is reversed at the next higher level. The real author (of the book)always makes it a point of honor to prevent the real readers from beingable to read his presentation of the two stories before he permits themto do so. This paradox highlights, in yet another respect, the centralsignificance of reading and writing activities for the narrative construc-tion of the classical detective novel. In its elaborately contrived structures,the detective novel thus presents a number of entangled writing-and-reading contests that ultimately only serve to demonstrate the superiorpower of writing (on the author's part), a power, moreover, that provesDETECTIVE AS READER 459

itself in two consecutive ways: in first protecting the stories against be-ing read until the very end and in finally producing a perfect as wellas comprehensive reading. What this paradox, in the last analysis, helpsto underline is the decisive power of the story and of narration for theorganizing concept of reality as implied in this type of detective fiction.8

What has been said so far about the writing and reading phenomenaon various levels clearly indicates that both phenomena have to be con-sidered as acts. And explicitly considering them as acts in their own rightwill help to throw light on one further dimension of narrativity in detec-tive fiction. Paul Ricoeur's dialectical characterization of action as "the

interplay between being able to act and being bound to the world order"(173) may serve as a simplified formula for the description of the com-peting writing and reading activities in classical detective novels. The twocomponents of every act—freedom and constraint—here occur in a specificarrangement. Under this perspective, writing a crime story essentially func-tions as an act of freedom. The criminal attempts to realize himself andto gratify his desires by freeing himself from the restraints of society andits defining norms. By means of his story the criminal creates for himselfa free place, a place of his own outside society's order. And as long ashe is in exclusive possession of his story, he is, literally, free. The detec-tive, on the other hand, acts as society's agent in order to restrict thisfreedom and bind the criminal again to the constraining rules of societythrough arrest and punishment (imprisonment or execution). The detec-tive's means of achieving this is getting hold of his story, thus gainingpower over him and depriving him of his free self-determination.

In general, the basic reading concept embodied in the classical detec-tive novel can be characterized, as William Stowe has shown, as a semioticpractice that is based on the presupposition of a clear distinction betweenobject and subject, between the (assumed) objectivity of the hidden mean-ing and the pure instrumentality of the detective's discerning intellect.It is a case of code-reading, though the underlying simple constellationis made complicated by having the message buried in a mass of othersigns, by requiring the prior decipherment of the code, and by havingsomeone send false messages. The classical attributes of the detective testifyto this instrumentalist concept of reading. He is predominantly definedby his cold detachment from all human concerns, the clarity of his analyticintellect, and his interest in the truth-finding process for its sake. In ac-cordance with the assumed neutrality of thinking and language in theprocedure of reading and understanding the mystery, only one meaningcan be the correct one, and it usually appears as self-evident, once it is

8This foregrounding of the "literary" nature of the various activities in a detective novel extendsto some further motifs, for instance the reference frequently found in detective novels to the detectivegenre itself (usually in the form of a character's pointing out that things are not as simple and stereotypedas in a whodunit), which underlies the self-conscious literariness of novels written after the classical formula.

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discovered and explained. Applying the finally discovered truth to restor-ing the disrupted social order does not normally pose any problems. Thecriminal—and with him the threat to society—is simply eliminated. Theease of the closure seems due to the conventional premise, in classicaldetective fiction, of a basic congruence between language, thinking, andreality that is only temporarily obscured by the criminal.

Departing from this instrumentalist reading model, the American hard-boiled school (especially Hammett, Chandler, and Ross Macdonald) hasdeveloped a more complex concept, which Stowe terms "hermeneutic"(374). Here the interpretation, as practiced by the private eye, is presentedas an interaction between the reading subject and the object (the text) inwhich neither side remains a stable entity. The detective's reading ac-tivities affect the text (the mystery he investigates) as he in turn is af-fected by it. The first story, of crime and criminal, keeps changing inthe course of its reconstruction in the second story. One manifestationof this change is the instability of the mystery, the expansion of the story'sconfines. The initial problem is usually simple and unimportant (suchas the theft of a gold coin in Chandler's The High Window), but in thecourse of the detective's interpretive operations, the mystery shifts andexpands so that a wide net of connected crimes (such as counterfeiting,blackmail, adultery, murder) is gradually brought to light. Moreover, thetext of the first story not only changes in the extension of its meaning;it literally reacts to the reader's endeavors to read it. In order to protecthis guilty secrets from being exposed, the criminal starts committing follow-up crimes, generally murders, that are intended to keep his storyunreadable for the investigator by removing betraying clues, namely possi-ble informants, who might—again, quite literally—tell his story (whosemurders in themselves, however, also constitute new potential indicatorsof the murderer's identity). The further the detective penetrates the con-text of mystery and crime, the more corpses appear, providing him withnew clues to old problems but at the same time creating fresh mysteries.

While the detective's interference thus actually modifies and shiftsthe meaning of the text, he himself is in turn also increasingly affectedand changed by the results of his interpretive efforts. Being at least inpart the cause of some of the crimes makes him implicitly guilty and com-promises him morally. The influence this has on his self-image togetherwith his insight into the inextricably complex ramifications of the crimestends to produce frustration and disillusionment in him, which finally leavehim in a paralyzed state of profound weariness and melancholy.

One crucial further consequence of the interactional reading conceptin hard-boiled novels is the detective's loss of power over the first storyand its meaning. Although he is frequently still able to read the truthin the text, he can no longer extract it, as it were, and employ it to remedyinjustice and disorder in society. In short, he cannot publish the storyDETECTIVE AS READER 461

anymore. This is due to a number of factors: the scarcity of irrefutablematerial evidence and the extreme complexity of the interconnected crimes,his professional dependence (he cannot turn in a client, if the client isrevealed as the culprit) as well as his personal involvement (he wants toavoid hurting an innocent person or one for whom he cares), the generalcorruption of society and of the police. So, on the one hand, the detectiveis deprived of the freedom to act on the result of his reading; on theother, the truth is useless and ineffectual, because society is not interestedin finding the hidden meaning, nor is there a general consensus aboutthe necessity of detection at all. The client, for instance, tends to dismissthe detective once the investigation moves too close to his own guilt. Thedetective's reading venture is thus no longer supported or even legitimizedby an interpretive community. The story has lost its social function andpotential power. In the society of the hard-boiled novel, it has ceasedto function as a regulating and ordering instrument. The sheer powerof money and political position has finally superseded its force.

This lack of confidence in the efficacy of reading and story-tellingis reflected in the changed mode of presentation of the second story. Theinvestigation is normally narrated by the hard-boiled reader himself, inthe first person, so that the classical separation between reader andwriter—as in the Holmes-Watson constellation—is given up. Consequently,the literary character of the second story, as a chronicle, is deempha-sized. Rather, the reader is decidedly given the illusion of the unmediatedpresence of the detective's activities and experiences. At the same time,the constantly shifting and expanding mysteries make it less possible forthe reader to compete with the detective in reading the story than inclassical detective novels.

In order to indicate the generally constitutive function of the writing andreading contest for the different varieties of detective fiction, I shall nowsketch, by way of concrete examples, the respective narrative structuresof two further important subtypes, the crime novel and the police-procedural. Francis lies' Malice Afordhought (1931) exemplifies that the inter-play of writing and reading activities remains constitutive for the crimenovel, too, in spite of the extensive variation that the classical detectiveformula has undergone here. Through the inversion of the perspectivethe reader is enabled to follow the criminal's planning and executing—his writing—of the crime story (a doctor killing his wife to be free tomarry someone else), with particular attention to the (successful) measurestaken by the criminal to preclude a correct reading of his story (plantingmisleading clues, disguising the timing of his activities, and so on). Thisrelatively simple constellation is complicated in the course of a follow-upmurder scheme. This time suspicion is aroused, and the police start in-vestigating: so, while the criminal is again proceeding to write his crimestory he becomes aware of the reading attempts on the other side, and

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he tries to read the police's story of detection. The interplay of writingand reading is now given an additional twist, however, in that the suc-cess of his first story has made the criminal over-confident of his skillsas a writer and a reader and consequently somewhat careless in their ex-ercise. The reader of the novel is thereby placed in a position to obtaina clearer picture of the actual progress of detection as well as to developdoubts about the actual efficacy of the crime scheme. Thus, for once,the real reader finds himself in a better position than the protagonist toread the true state of affairs with respect to the crime story as well asto the detection story. Part of the suspense here is created by the nar-rative device of the criminal's perspective, which is apt to force the readerinto a contradictory attitude, inducing him to sympathize with the pro-tagonist in terms of perception and to be repelled by him in terms ofmorality: for this reason the interplay of writing and reading betweencriminal and police will be experienced with mingled anxiety and relief.

Ed McBain's King's Ransom (1959), a police novel connecting crimenovel components with hard-boiled tendencies, employs the method ofparalleling the two stories: the progressing story of the crime (kidnappinga boy and, then, attempting to extort the ransom from the father) alter-nates with the story of the detection (the police attempting to discoverthe criminals' whereabouts and seizing them before they receive the moneyor harm the boy). The alternating narration of the two stories is usedsystematically by McBain to foreground the efforts undertaken by eachside at writing its own story, at reading that of the others, and at foilingthe other side's attempts to read its own side's story. The police relyon material clues (such as the tire tracks) and, especially, on the criminals'phone calls (instructions for the handing over of the ransom) for theirattempted reading of the crime story. Thus, the continuation of the crimestory itself serves as a major source of clues. On the basis of their (in-conclusive) reading, the police proceed to write their story of detection(for instance, by putting up road blocks). The kidnappers, in their turn,try to read the police's progressing story—by listening in on the policeradio to find out about their measures. And they contrive to write theircrime story in such a way that it cannot be read by the police. Theirmain device is a radio transmitter and receiver, by which they are ableboth to listen in on the plans of the police and also to direct, throughautomobile telephone, the route of the ransom-money car without riskof detection. This contest is decided in favor of the police only throughbetrayal: one of the criminals betrays their writing scheme to the policethrough the very device used to implement it (by giving away details aboutthe planned continuation of the story). Since the reader is in the positionto watch alternately the progress of both stories, he very specificallybecomes the witness of a writing-and-reading contest. The crime-and-detection plot is presented as a battle for the possession of stories, andDETECTIVE AS READER 463

gaining knowledge of the story is tantamount to power and victory.To conclude this redescription of detective fiction, I should like ten-

tatively to connect the reading in these novels with the reading of them.Contextualizing detective fiction in terms of narrative and reading con-cepts necessarily carries implications about the possible models of interac-tion between the actual reader and the text, that is, about the mannerin which such stories can be read and about the psychological functionthis reading might have. As far as the classical type is concerned, theelaborate presentation of, and play with, the reading and writing pro-cesses on several levels as well as the superior power ascribed to readingand readers might account for its popularity among writers, academics,theologians, and other intellectuals—somewhat more specifically thanassumed by some critics, such as Marjorie Nicolson or Dennis Porter,9who generally point to an analogy between detective and scholar or scientistin their capacity to discover meaning, affirm rationality, and confer orderon chaos. The lonely and (socially) marginalized intellectual is shown topossess the power to defuse the threats of disrupting social forces by simplyreading, that is, interpreting and explaining, them. Detective fiction'svalorization of interpretive order may be specified further still. Theanonymity and pervasiveness of the vaguely perceived threats to society'sstability10 are invariably reduced and averted by means oí story-telling: theconcluding narration of the crime, revealing the origin of the disruption,identifying its individual agent(s), and predicting as well as entailing theproper ending may be taken as a powerful confirmation of the significanceof stories and, indeed, of traditional literature, as fundamental social order-ing structures. In a time when familiar, clear cut, and finite patterns werestarting to disappear from science (for instance, the theory of relativity)as well as literature (for instance, modernism), the detective genre thusmay have seemed to offer to intellectuals reassuring proof of the validityof the personal story. This social motive is probably supplemented bythe inherent appeal, for such readers, of watching their special profes-sional skills of interpretation exercised in a thrilling and playful mannerand of being at the same time invited to participate in the game. Thevery possibility of participating in the game, however, frequently createsthe paradox, mentioned above, of subtly undermining the affirmative ef-fect. Whereas within the novel the detective invariably proves the superior-ity of reading over writing, the novelist very often (I suspect) succeedsin proving the reverse—the superiority of his or her writing over the novel-reader's reading skills. Advancing the above argument one step further,one might suggest that the elaborate and ultimately paradoxical narrative

'See Chapter Twelve in his book (223-244).,0The social changes to which the classical detective genre is thought to react are usually described

as political, social, or economic threats to the privileged position of the middle classes during the decadesaround the turn of the century—the growing political power of the working classes, trade-unionism,widespread theft, etc. See Jerry Palmer (148-150).

464 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

organization of the classical detective novel, although ostensibly valorizingthe power of the story and of reading, in the last analysis stresses theliterary artificiality and playfully contrived nature of these ventures, thusenabling the reader consciously to accept the plot as a deliberate gameand not to fall victim to the illusion.

In contrast, hard-boiled detective novels seem to presuppose a readerwho from the start is less optimistic about the efficacy of interpretive skillsand of curing problems by narrating their stories. Furthermore, he seemsto have lost faith in the possibility of finding an objective truth and ofestablishing a simple order. These tendencies posit a changed concept ofreality—a reality characterized by more substantiality and resistance tothe individual's actions. Thus, the change from the distinctly literary natureof the narration in the classical formula to the more illusionist, unmediatedpresentation of the second story could indicate a shift in the reader's in-terest, a shift toward being directly present to social reality and experienc-ing interpretive skills in a more realistic setting, an immediacy that mayinvolve more imaginative risks and therefore more intense thrills. Thusanother kind of narrative paradox is created: while reducing or cancellingthe social relevance and effectivity of storytelling within the book, thehard-boiled novel as such surreptitiously reestablishes the unquestionablereality of the private eye's world and, indeed, of his story.11

WORKS CITED

Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and PopularCulture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca:Cornell UP, 1978.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.Haycraft, Howard, ed. The Art of the Mystery Story. New York: Simon, 1946.____Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. 1941. New York:

Biblio, 1968.Kermode, Frank. "Novel and Narrative." The Theory of the Novel: New Essays.

Ed. John Halperin. New York: Oxford UP, 1974. 155-174.Knight, Stephen. Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1980.Knox, Ronald A. "Detective Story Decalogue." Haycraft, The Art of the Mystery

Story 194-196.

nOutside the confines of the popular genre, modern novelists have significantly used the patternof the detective's investigation and storytelling to question the structuring power of narrativity and thevalidity of narrative closure much more radically. See Frank Kermode's "Novel and Narrative".

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Mitchell, W. T. J., ed. On Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.Most, Glenn, and William Stowe, eds. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction and

Literary Theory. San Diego: Harcourt, 1983.Nicolson, Majorie. "The Professor and the Detective." Haycraft, The Art of the

Mystery Story 110-127.Palmer, Jerry. Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre. London: Arnold, 1978.Porter, Dennis. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New Haven:

Yale UP, 1981.Ricoeur, Paul. "Narrative Time." Mitchell 165-186.Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories." Mitchell

209-232.

Stowe, William. "From Semiotics to Hermeneutics: Modes of Detection in Doyleand Chandler." Most 366-383.

Todorov, Tzvetan. "The Typology of Detective Fiction. " The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca:Cornell UP, 1977. 42-52.

Van Dine, S. S. "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." Haycraft, TheArt of the Mystery Story 189-193.

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