100 Greatest Literary Detectives (2018) ed. by Eric Sandberg

Source: Review Copy (Rowman and Littlefield)

This is a book which I have been eagerly waiting to read for quite some time, intrigued to see which sleuths did or did not make it the list – oh and I did get to contribute a chapter as well on Juanita Sheridan’s Lily Wu. So yes a modicum of personal bias. However, as my review will hopefully reveal some there are many reasons why this is a great read and in the main I’d say it was entertaining, informative and a significant contribution to the growing body of academic work on the mystery genre. Big words indeed, but I think they’re justified.

My enjoyment of this book began from the very first page, in fact the very first sentence, as I loved how Eric Sandberg begins his introduction to the collection:

‘If you love crime fiction, you will hate this book. Why? You will hate it because a list of the hundred greatest fictional detectives will almost certainly be missing one, if not several, of your favourite hard-boiled private eyes, dedicated police officers, or amateur sleuths.’

It’s great how passion for the genre is encouraged from the very beginning and I agree that crime fiction is ‘a form worth getting angry over,’ or at the very least worth enthusiastic discussion. Sandberg then goes on to tackle the title’s most slippery word: Greatest, acknowledging its subjectivity, unreliability and liability. Yet as he goes on to say value judgements are not wholly avoidable, though the rest of his introduction perhaps implicitly and explicitly advocates not treating this book as a 100 best list, but more of a celebration of and re-evaluation of fictional sleuths and detectives from around the world. This mind set worked for me very well and to be honest a few characters in I was quite oblivious to this book being a list – but more on that later.

Before moving onto the body of the book, I also want to flag up some of the interesting points Sandberg makes on characterisation and detective fiction. I was initially surprised by his assertion that academia has been slow to recognise the significance of characterisation in this genre, preferring to focus more on the social and political implication of such works. One example of this that he highlights concerns Northrop Frye who was of the thought that: ‘If the author of a crime story is compelled to conceal or withhold key information about one, and often more, of the characters in their story in order to serve the plot, she inevitably damages the work’s capacity for characterisation.’ Moreover Frye went as far as defining crime fiction as a ‘pure caricature of the novel form,’ since ‘the novel is designed to reveal character, the detective story to conceal it.’ This idea by Frye has definitely stuck with me, certainly got me thinking and would definitely be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on the matter. Nevertheless the introduction culminates with the question of ‘how […] does character function in crime fiction?,’ a question I think this book poses many and varied answers to.

So on to the entries for the 100 sleuths. On first glance at the contents pages I have to admit that nearly 50% of the character names did not ring a bell. Yet ironically this is part of one of the main reasons why I really valued this book, as it does much to avoid ethnocentrism, in particular there is no imbalanced positive bias towards Western authors and their creations. I was impressed that outside of England and the USA, the collection houses sleuths from 27 other different countries. However, don’t panic Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and Augustus Dupin did make the cut, but this book strongly testifies to the fact that there are a whole host of other fictional sleuths beyond the Western mystery fiction canon as it were, who are similarly well-known, loved and valued. Byomkesh Bakshi might not be a sleuth which readily comes to mind when I think of greatest detectives, (though I have read one short story featuring him), yet as Anindita Dey points out in her entry he ‘has been a significant figure in Indian popular culture for eighty five years’ and has featured in TV and film adaptations. Yet in a way, hopefully not contradicting myself too much, this is a collection of sleuths which also shows that significance and contribution to the genre do not always equate to popularity. Finally the diversity of this book can also be seen in the time periods the entries cover with the book featuring a number of authors from the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st century. There is perhaps a slight leaning towards male sleuths, in terms of numbers, but given the mammoth nature of the task and how it needed to be put together this is not an unforgivable imbalance.

One of the key ideas which ran through many of the entries for me, was how the culture within which the sleuth was being created impacted how they were formed, as in many ways these protagonists were a response to the changes writers saw going on around them. This is particularly apparent in Satomi Saito’s entry on Rampo Edogawa’s Kogoro Akechi. I’ve read a couple of short stories featuring this character, but Saito’s entry was really helpful in giving the bigger picture, discussing how Akechi developed and changed over the years to fit in with the changing nature of Japan. It was also interesting to read that the cartoon/comic series, Case Closed is potentially part of the ‘broader legacy of the iconic Akechi and the Boy detectives.’ Another sleuth who responds to the culture he was created in is Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi, whose fictional adventures began in the 1930s and as they progressed in to the 40s and 50s, readers can see how he responds to and negotiates big events in the real world such as the Independence of India and the separation of India and Bengal. Equally both of these characters mentioned above are good examples of sleuths interacting with/ writing back to icons of Western mystery fiction, in particular Sherlock Holmes. One final note on the Japanese entries in this book is how they come from varying time periods, meaning for me at any rate that I got a better idea of how the figure of the sleuth evolved over time in Japan.

The relationship between culture and literary creation though is not one sided as at times countries have appropriated literature for cultural and political reasons. An interesting example of this which I came across in this book is from Switzerland, as Friedirch Charles Glauser’s Fahnderwachtmeister Jakob Studer stories were used almost as a cultural weapon by the Swiss government in their ‘state sponsored […] spiritual defence of the homeland,’ which sought to evidence the divergence between Switzerland and Germany during the 1930s; a time period in which Hitler ‘expansionist rhetoric intensified.’

Given the wide diversity of the sleuths contained in this book, you won’t be surprised to read that I enjoyed coming across new fictional creations, of which I have shared a few below (in a list of my mine own aptly enough):

• Arthur Conan Doyle is not the only one to have to bring a fictional sleuth back from the dead as Mexican writer, Paco Ignacio Taibo II had to resurrect his creation, Hector Belascoarian Shayne, due to public outcry.
• I might be the last person to the party on this particular fact, but apparently Ed McBain was reluctant to make Steve Carella into a lead character in his 87^th Precinct series. Carella was supposed to be fatally shot in the 3^rd novel, but McBain’s editors insisted that this had to be changed.
• In Kalpana Swaminathan’s The Gardener’s Song (2007), the author spoors Lewis Carroll’s poem, ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’ – a juxtaposition I find very intriguing and I love how Felicity Hand says in the entry that ‘the unpredictability of modern Mumbai life is reflected in the Victorian poet’s nonsense verse.’ Certainly not a sentence you come across every day.
• Although I was familiar with the name of the sleuth Don Isidro Parodi, being mentioned in Martin Edwards’ The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), I didn’t realise that he solved his cases, whilst confined to a prison cell, having been wrongfully sentenced for a crime he did not do.
• Cheng Xiaoqing’s Huo Sang, who featured in stories in the 1920s and 30s, was not a character I was familiar with, but what really intrigued me about this entry firstly were the comments made on translating crime fiction, as apparently there is only one English translation of these tales, (correct me if I am wrong), but unfortunately this edition radically alters the context, meaning and significance of the original texts’ language. Whilst I am familiar with this happening to English texts, such as Christie’s novels, it was interesting to see this phenomena happening in reverse. On the plus side Sang sounds like an engaging sleuth, whose personality is not simply being a copycat of Sherlock Holmes, instead fusing Western and eastern elements in a complicated and conflicting relationship.
• Not sure if I already knew this but then forgot it, but also included in this top 100 is Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’ Venus Johnson, the first fictional African American detective and Hopkins’ herself was one of the earliest black American writers to produce crime fiction. Interestingly Johnson’s sleuthing role comes through her job as a maid, ultimately saving her employee’s daughter when they are kidnapped. She appears in Hagar’s Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, which was serialised in 1901-1902. Suitably intrigued so may need to give this book a go.
• Finally another new sleuth to me is Judith Lee, who uses her lip reading skills to foil criminal plots. She was created by Richard Marsh and appeared during the Edwardian era. One thing I have enjoyed about this book is how it has shown the wide variety of sleuths pre-the Golden Age of detective fiction.

Yet even with authors I am familiar with I still came across some new information, such as the signifance of Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket, as well as the fact that Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1860-1, published The Trail of the Serpent which includes a mute sleuth who uses sign language to his own advantage in capturing crooks. I have also often wondered if I should give Wilkie Collins’ The Law and the Lady (1875) a go, but I think Joanna Ella Parson’s entry on Valeria Brinton, the story’s lead, has definitely given me the additional nudge that I need.

It goes without saying really that when it came to some entries on authors and characters I do know very well, I didn’t always agree with everything written about them. Then again I think this book is designed to and actively encourages debate and discussion. For instance I probably wouldn’t agree that the interwar period was ‘an era of detection defined by its interest in the “why” rather than the “how” of crime,’ nor do I think Albert Campion was a ‘ground breaking character [who] would become the archetypal gentlemen detective.’ After all Lord Peter Wimsey did appear many years before him. Equally probably wouldn’t agree on there being equal partnership between Campion and Lady Amanda Fitton, leaning more towards Megan Hoffman’s reading of the pair. However, having contributed an entry of my own I do appreciate how difficult it is to really explore a fictional detective in less than 1000 words. Even more difficult perhaps when you are dealing with a more well-known character especially.

Sometimes you can identify a book as a good read based on what happens once you’ve finished it and this is definitely one of those reads, as not only has it made me want to re-read certain authors, but it has also pointed me in the direction of new titles to try and above all given me a much deeper appreciation of crime fiction globally. So for me this book is far more and far better than a mere list of names, instead providing much fuel for future reading and future discussions. Unsurprisingly I highly recommend this given how much it has to offer crime fiction fans.

Rating: 4.5/5