Private Investigators Tell Their Story

We tend to romanticize the work of the lone detective, and this is supported by fictional characters created in books and film. In reality, the life of private investigators can be somewhat repetitious and tedious. They do mundane things like deliver summons papers or sit in a car all night, waiting for evidence of someone's adultery, although no fault divorce makes this less frequent. They may be called upon to investigate dubious insurance claims. Several of them are ex-police officers. It's certainly true that they usually have more fun in stories.

Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe were early contributors to the genre but the most successful character was Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle created the most scientific of private investigators, Holmes being obsessed with forensic clues. He would examine things for no apparent reason, only to astound his sidekick, Watson with his miraculous solving of the case. He was the very essence of an English, Victorian gentleman but with an unfortunate addiction to opium. Later, a Belgian sleuth named Hercule Poirot would astonish us with his powers of deduction. His creator Agatha Christie, a genteel English lady, wrote of gruesome stabbings and poisonings in elegant drawing rooms. Poirot would gather everyone together near the end and expose the murderer. This was all in the classic tradition of the whodunit and suave private investigators that didn't need guns or fast car chases to hunt their quarry.

America in the 1940s was a whole, different matter. Raymond Chandler and Dashell Hammett wrote about the seedy underbelly of urban America. Their stories were peppered with femmes fatales and murders were committed in alleyways and smoky nightclubs. Hammett created the Sam Spade character and Chandler wrote about Philip Marlow. Both these private investigators appeared in the movies with Marlow being a particular favorite. Different actors have portrayed him, including Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. The character featured in classic film noir, such as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye.

Television brought another dimension to the genre. The 1970s had a plethora of shows with private investigators. They tended to be lighter in tone than their cinema counterparts and launched the careers of several actors. Tom Selleck starred in Magnum P.I., Bruce Willis in Moonlighting and Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele. Playing private investigators can also revive careers, as when James Garner starred in The Rockford Files. Modern shows are apt to have some sort of gimmick. In Monk, for example, the eponymous hero has obsessive compulsive disorder. No matter how it's presented, this genre will continue to have a following.