A few questions about crime fiction

July 26, 2013 5:28 AM

Why are police procedural novels generally written in the third person, while private eye novels are written in the first person?

I can come up with a reasonable explanation -- more of an ensemble cast, easier to skip around to different character's POVs -- but I don't know if this is really the reason or if it's just a rationalization. I mean, private eye novels can have an ensemble cast too.

Was it just that Philip Marlowe was first person? But Sam Spade and the Continental Op were third person. What about other proto-private eyes in the '20s, were any of them first person?

Are there any significant post-Chandler private eyes that are written in the third person? Are there any cop-centric crime novels that are written in the first person?

What was the template for police procedurals anyway, the Marlowe equivalent that everyone imitates? Was it Dragnet? (but that's semi-first person narrated by Friday) Was it all those Ed McBain books? Or the Martin Beck series? I'm really just curious how these two narrative conventions developed.

posted by pete_22 to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Response by poster: I meant to say the Continental Op was first person, of course, as was Nick in the Thin Man. So was The Maltese Falcon the only exception?
posted by pete_22 at 5:30 AM on July 26, 2013

Just my opinion, but I think Chandler and Hammett created a model that practically redefined the genre. It's kind of how it's hard to play alto sax in jazz anymore and not sound like Charlie Parker. Part of that style is to write first person.

But I also think there is a structural advantage to 1st person when writing a detective story: the reader knows what the detective knows. No more, no less (although in most of these stories there's a veiled reveal toward the end that indicates he's figured it out without exactly telling you, i.e. "I was lighting my 48th cigarette of the day when I suddenly remembered about the MacGuffin. I grabbed my coat and my gun.") That's not the only way to write a mystery, but it allows the MC to dole out red herrings and try out false trails without the reader feeling that the author led him or her astray.
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:11 AM on July 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

My friend Tyler Dilts wrote a procedural with a 1st person protagonist cop; A King of Infinite Space.

Surely there are others?

Would Sherlock Holmes qualify as a procedural? If so, that pushes the genesis back a bit.
posted by notyou at 6:27 AM on July 26, 2013

It's also the case that police procedurals are focused on precisely that: a network of characters working through a complex group process. Even when you have dominant POV characters, the interactions of the team remain central to the narrative. By contrast, private detective novels usually focus on a single character who often does not "play well with others" (that's part of the mythos of the form, I think), and who has at most one or two sidekicks who are rarely equal partners in the PD's work.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:11 AM on July 26, 2013 [3 favorites]

George Simeon's Maigret is usually credited as the first big police detective main character. I think those books are in close third, like the Maltese Falcon. So maybe it just flows from that.

I can't help thinking that it may be something to do with the author and/or genre's strategies for withholding info from the reader. There's a inherent perspective problem with mysteries in that you want to keep the audience guessing through the book until the big reveal, yet you must also parcel out enough info to let them make an educated guess. So you've got to tell the tale from some perspective that gives them that info --- that sees what the detective sees, but doesn't know what the detective knows. You can use a Watson for this, which has its own problems, or you can use close third. Or you can let the reader solve with the detective, as in first. If the latter, the reader pretty much learns the solution when the detective does. If the former, you can have a big reveal scene.
posted by Diablevert at 7:59 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

To be fair, even before the hard boiled writers, a lot of detective stories were in first person, only with a peripheral narrator. Think Doyle (Watson) or Poe (Dupin's flatmate). Arguably, it was Poe who founded the detective/whodunit genre to begin with.

Also, it's easier to do the literary legerdemain required to both give and obscure clues when writing in the first person rather than the third, which is often omniscient.
posted by absalom at 5:47 PM on July 26, 2013

Interesting question, interesting answers. I'm not sure how strictly true this rule of thumb is, though - depending on your genre-definitional and chronological boundaries, it's either pretty darn strong or not so much.

Some minor contributions to muddy the waters:

I can think of one pretty prominent contemporary author who switches between procedural and PI fiction: Michael Connelly. He's used the same character, Harry Bosch, as both an LAPD homicide detective and a PI, and has used first and third person narration for both kinds of novels.

For ensemble-cast, third-person PI fiction, there are Joe Gores's DKA stories.
posted by snoe at 2:03 PM on July 28, 2013