JUNE 4th, 1954DON'T LET the facts spoil a good story, runs the cynical (and sometimes tempting) old journalistic adage. Don't spoil the fantasies of fiction with the mundaneness of reality was the theme of this editorial from
The Irish Timesin 1954 which contrasted the different styles of American and British fictional private detectives with each other and with their real counterparts.
The Private Dick
It seems that the private detective’s lot is not altogether a happy one – in Britain, at any rate. In order to make it happier, the Association of British Detectives has just been formed to “clean up” the profession, and to press for some kind of official licensing system. The vast army of readers of detective stories will be shocked to learn that trade unionism can have any place in the lives of their heroes. If the writers of these stories are to be believed, the private detective is excessively individualistic. His methods are all his own; his behaviour is eccentric; and in many cases he seems to have no interest in a reward for his services.
The American type – for example, Raymond Chandler’s indestructible Marlowe – is more mercenary that his British cousin, who is usually backward about coming forward, so far as cash is concerned.
Lord Peter Wimsey surely would be insulted if a client were to offer even to pay his expenses; but Marlowe would refuse even to load his gun, or to polish his brass knuckles, without a substantial retainer.
Even Sherlock Holmes himself took cases simply because their perversity attracted him. He was not above accepting a precious gift from a distinguished client; but, if Dr Watson is to be believed, money meant little to him. So long as he had sufficient funds for violin strings, cocaine and tobacco, the Sage of Baker Street was content: clearly there was a private income somewhere or other.
Holmes would have scorned the Association of British Detectives. He was not the sort of man to approve of organised groups.
Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that his professional descendants will achieve their aims, which at present are both modest and sensible. They follow a perilous trade; for there is no doubt that man is the most dangerous animal known to man.
According to the books in the lending library, the private detective must expect assault and battery every day of his working life. If he is lucky, he may get off with nothing more than a sound beating over the head with a pistol-butt; if he is unlucky, he may be thrown into an alligator tank, or punctured by a curare-tipped arrowhead.
Surely, then, he ought not to be grudged the official recognition and professional éclat for which he so modestly yearns. He also has raised his voice against the description of himself as a “private inquiry agent”; for he thinks that unscrupulous colleagues have brought the term into disrepute. In future he wishes to be known as a “private investigator.”
So far as the public is concerned, however, he will have to resign himself to being called a private detective, or “private eye.” Fact, alas, cannot hope to compete with fiction; and fiction will continue to establish its own romantic definition of the profession