EVOLUTION OF DETECTION

trench coats, fedoras
by Earl "Ah, the good old days" Staggs

Back in the day, when Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Mike Shayne needed information to catch the bad guys, they wore trench coats, fedoras and used up a lot of shoe leather. They scoured the mean streets for clues, twisted the arms of snitches, romanced willowy blondes, bribed bartenders and hotel desk clerks, all in search of information that would lead them to the solution of a crime.

Not any more. Not if you watch mystery and crime shows on TV.

No longer do our heroes have to plead for warrants to examine phone records, wade through years of newspaper articles, get witnesses to spend hours going through mug books, or sweet-talk an old girlfriend at the Department of Motor Vehicles to trace a license plate number.

All it takes now is a few keystrokes.

Nearly every crime show has a computer wizard/master hacker equipped with a million dollars worth of equipment who can come up with any information on anyone in any corner of the globe in seconds.

Take “Criminal Minds” for instance. Approximately every five minutes, one of the profile team calls Garcia, their mistress of the microchip, and the conversation goes something like this:

“Hey, babycakes, I need a listing of all twenty-five-year-old redheaded women who spilled beer on their yellow dress while on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean in 1983.”

“Sure thing, sweet cheeks. Give me a second. Ah! Here it is. There were three of them and they all live within a mile of where you are right now.”

NCIS has two of them. Both McGee and Abby, with flying fingers, can key up any information from any data base on the planet. Need the criminal record or military history of a suspect? How about high school yearbook pictures, a listing of any call made or received on any cell phone, or every home address the suspect ever had.

You’ll find someone like them on all the popular crime shows these days.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating my examples a bit, and I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with any of it. I watch those shows and enjoy them. After all, with the technology available today, there’s no reason not to use it to catch the bad guys.

But somewhere inside me, I miss the trench coats, fedoras and hard-drinking, two-fisted gumshoes whose technology was as simple as a punch in the mouth or a slug from a .45.

Earl Staggs

The mystery mystery by Chester Campbell

We write about it and talk about it all the time. It's part of the title of this blog. But just what is a "mystery?" My computer dictionary defines it as: "Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding."

Does that mean we don't really know what we're writing or talking about? I sometimes think so. But to put a more kindly face on it, I'd say us writers don't expect our readers to understand what's going on until we explain it to them.

The explaining takes a lot of different twists and turns and involves many different people.

So what makes a good mystery? Plot is important, of course. Without it, there would be no mystery. But I think the most memorable mysteries are those featuring truly memorable characters.


Most familiar in the classic hardboiled ranks are guys like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe. From a different perspective, there are Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, along with Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.

Coming down to the present, the list could go on and on. Fortunately, there are lots of contemporary authors creating memorable characters.

But the question remains, is plot more important in creating a memorable mystery, or is it character? What do you think?

Chester Campbell
Murder Mania