Rui Zink, Novelist and Lterature Professor (UNova, Lisbon) about Hammett and Crime Fiction

You might also be interested in Raymond Chandler's Ten Commandments for Writing a Detective Story

A U.S. reaction to the British murder mysteries (prodigal in the subgenre of "closet mystery") was the American hard-boiled school of crime writing (certain works in the field are also referred to as noir fiction). Writers like Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), Jonathan Latimer (1906–1983), Mickey Spillane (1918–2006), and many others decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction. The protagonist is an investigator that does not really have lawful legitimacy (the private eye), tough and morose, involved with  the sleazy / urban side of life in the U.S.A. Below is the text Precisão e Bom Senso written by Rui Zink, who was a guest in this class in 2013 to discuss crime fiction

Precision. Precision and a realism more real than real than reality — et voilá what the American detective novel taught me.  No sugar-coating, no spurious feelings - I hope that this will have brought in at this moment some students to the dictionary to see what "feelings" mean.  The American detective novel is not a uniform being ; however, in my imagined memory as a reader (and reading is only fun when it becomes an imagined memory), there is within it a heavy sound that is distinguishable from what was there before and what will be there after, or from what was done in other parts. The concrete jungle was invented with the Hammettian hardboiled whose protagonist is the only being on the face of the Earth more cynical than a wooden spoon. [1] The private detective isn't really the one who calls the shots. He isn't particularly intelligent and certainly not very noble. He is the type of guy who does a job, often a dirty job, solely because someone has to do it.  Even in Chandler, who romanticizes and inflates the detective type with a more literary vigueur, the detective is a salaried worker, a mercenary for hire, a hero on sale. When he meets his client he names his price, something like "50 dollars per day plus expenses." And then it starts: this unlikely Lancelot on a wooden horse goes looking for the missing damsel in distress, sometimes a fickle rich widow, others an estranged spouse, but mostly a femme fatale.

Indeed, the American detective novel is at times misogynistic—excuse me, is there a problem? Women are not to be trusted — and, for the record, neither are men. The detective, however, has a strong work ethic. If you pay him, he is up for anything, even descending to the depths of hell (usually they are close by, on the ground floor), taking beatings, and gunshots, and being manipulated   puppeted, because a contract is meant to be honored, even when it it may cost us our lives and we suspect that our client hasn't told us the entire story and   might actually be the bad guy. The city is a concrete jungle. If we do away with the chrome exterior we discover that everyone has sordid secrets-except those that don't have sordid secrets because they are sordid themselves and dangerous on the very surface. The private eye is a solitary horseman who has the law against him just as much as the world of crime. He makes everyone uncomfortable, from any direction may come a gunshot or a dagger.  He isn't very well paid either, in this he reminds us our Portuguese teachers and writers. Only those "50 dollars plus expenses." For what reason, then, would he risk his life? Spenser [2], perhaps the most legitimate heir to Marlowe and Chandler, gives the best and most succinct explanation: "because that's what I do." The detective does what he has to do because that is what he does, that is what he is good at. The detective isn't a force for morality, thank God. He doesn't fight corruption, he just uncovers it. And (alright, buster) sooner or later he does "the right thing." But not because he wants to, just because, sometimes, luckily not often, the right thing is the right thing to do.

With Dashiell Hammet and Rayond Chandler, the American detective novel gained style and complexity. Even still it never softened, the American detective isn't a crybaby. Is he sentimental? Yes, if his salary allows it. Even if the detective wanted to stop to smell the roses, there aren't any around him. It is a world without the metaphysical.

America, ah, America. There isn't a place where pragmatic, down-to-earth America is more pragmatic, down-to-earth, brutal, ironic, pure and tough than in the detective genre. We could rather say in the "hardboiled detective fiction" or in the "noir novel," but there is no reason to be redundant, is there? America is like Pessoa’s character, Esteves from Tabacaria [3], metaphysics are out of the question. It is a tough place, and it isn't for crybabies. For this reason it is of the utmost importance that the words be precise, exact, fired intentionally, so that they hit the target, without sugar coating, without fancy trimmings, without European elegance—or any other kind, for the matter. There are no good manners in American crime novels. There are just bad manners. Because: bad manners are the only manners. They have the advantage of being economic and exact, and of getting directly to the point. For starters, everyone lies. Nothing is what it seems. Everyone lies because they have something to hide. America likes things clear. Nothing is more clear than this simple and beautiful (although brutal) premise: everyone lies. If there was someone that didn't lie they would have died on the first page,  the risk of—with their sickness—contaminating the entire book. America isn't for crybabies.

Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary (1857), a detailed study about life ─ the physical and psychological—of a provincial bourgeoisie. The equivalent in America is In Cold Blood [4], a novel that inaugurated a new genre: the nonfiction novel.  Only, this non-fiction novel is, in fact, a detective novel, except that it is written with real names and not just based on "true events," it shows & tells these "true events". Today it represents a whole literary and editorial subgenre: True Crime. Truman Capote’s book is a stylistic masterpiece, a lesson in style. A happy sum of what came before and not always would come after, but In Cold Blood stands for the American detective n genius: precision. Not a single word too many. Perfect paragraphs.

A narrative machine based on a simple structure that may well, after all, unfold and reveal itself  more complex, though never shying away from its initial beat, monotonous, monothematic, raw. Strong characters, a simple plot (a knight on a mission), dry dialogues, an unabashed worldvision: and now? How to resolve the next problem? The most refined form of genius is to turn ourselves into a machine. And the most perfect machine is Parker [5], a criminal with ethics, that doesn't like to be crossed and left for dead. Once betrayed by an accomplice, because he feels owed a miserable 70 thousand dollars, he brings down  "the outfit," an entire mafia style mega organization. If someone in the middle of the food chain would just have paid him, he wouldn't have done what not even the Police dared trying. Could it have been one or million or five million dollars instead of  seventy thousand? Yes, but it wouldn't have been as amusing.

After that come the variations, of course. And the variations are numerous, although less than one could hope for, if we consider that, between books, films and television series, the United States has produced in the last 80 years thousands of detective stories. Maybe more. Nevertheless, lieutenant Horatio Caine of CSI Miami (2002-2012) continues to be a direct heir of the Hammettian detective and, it hurts to say it, not very different from Mickey Spillane's bravado filled Mike Hammer (1947).

NOTES

[1]  Dashiell Hammett is credited with the term “hardboiled”—cynical and hard—traits we find as much in his novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) as in the 1941 film version with Humphrey Bogart.

[2] Parker, Robert B. The Godwulf Manuscript, of 1973, is the first of 40 novels with this autodiegetic narrator.

[3] I refuse to put a footnote here. Forgive me, but I refuse. Enough is enough, I don’t care if the students don’t get it.

[4] Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, 1966. The Portuguese title is A Sangue Frio.  

[5] Richard Stark, The Hunter, 1962.  Stark is a pseudonym of Donald Westlake, who also signs with his own name. In film, Parker has been played by tough actors from Lee Marvin to Jonathan Stratham, even Mel Gibson, among others.