Three Detectives, Three Approaches

Mystery writers often create and assure their fame, if only for a short time, by creating memorable detectives, who use either physical strength or psychological analysis or scientific expertise or some combination of various qualities to solve crimes to the satisfaction of the astute reader. I have had occasion to research the lives and work of three twentieth-century American mystery writers. The first essay, on Davis Dresser, has been published in American Hard-Boiled Crime Writers (Gale, 2000); the other essays, on Helen McCloy and Ralph McInerny, are in the hands of an editor. Each of these writers has created a famous detective. Davis Dresser, using the pseudonym of Brett Halliday, fashioned a tough, physical, daring private investigator, Michael Shayne. Helen McCloy created the first detective whose day job was that of psychiatrist. Ralph McInerny continues to write mysteries featuring Fr. Roger Dowling, priest and accidental detective. Dresserâs goal was to provide entertainment, McCloyâs to combine entertainment with psychological complexity. For McInerny, the Fr. Dowling novels achieve the twin classic purposes of literature: to delight and to teach, in this case to explore moral and theological perspectives.

      Michael Shayne, who first appeared in 1935, is a smart, likable private investigator with a taste for cognac who uses his brains and physical strength more often than his gun. He flirts with illegality to find criminals, and he does his work for the love of the hunt as well as for payment.

      Helen McCloy, Davis Dresserâs second wife, created a different sort of detective in psychiatrist Basil Willing, who uses his insights into human behavior and misbehavior to unmask criminals; for example, "'whenever you lied,'" he tells one culprit, "'you told the truth, for the creative imagination must always suggest the true emotional state of the creator.â" In a 1955 essay, McCloy complained that suspense novels did not get the status or critical attention they deserved. With the Basil Willing stories, McCloy tried to raise the level of detective fiction to a somewhat higher level than her husband had done with his Mike Shayne novels; she believed that the mystery could be as well written as any other novel

      Ralph McInerny does not seem to have any illusions about the genre of detective fiction. All of imaginative literature, McInerny asserts, has to do with people making choices that either strengthen or weaken character; we "instinctively turn to imaginative reenactments of human action for some sense of what it all means." Detective fiction accomplishes this goal on what McInerny calls "a fairly superficial level," yet Roger Dowling, through his vocation, ponders both the mysteries of life and its cosmic Mystery. Basil Willing ponders human behavior; Mike Shayne ponders nothing except the puzzle at hand.