The legendary detective : the private eye in fact and fiction / John Walton.
Walton, John, 1937- author.
2015
HV8088 .W35 2015 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title The legendary detective : the private eye in fact and fiction / John Walton.
Author Walton, John, 1937- author.
ISBN 9780226308265 (hardcover)
022630826X (hardcover)
9780226308432 (electronic book)
Published Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2015]
Copyright ©2015
Language English
Description x, 219 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Call Number HV8088 .W35 2015
Dewey Decimal Classification 363.28/9097309041
Summary ""I'm in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they dont want to take to the cops." That's Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, succinctly setting out our image of the private eye. A no-nonsense loner, working on the margins of society, working in the darkness to shine a little light. The reality is a little different - but no less fascinating. In The Legendary Detective, John Walton offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of the 1930s and '40s. Drawing on previously untapped archival accounts of actual detective work, Walton traces both the growth of major private detective agencies like Pinkerton, which became powerful bulwarks against social and labor unrest, and the motley, unglamorous work of small-time operatives. He then goes on to show us how writers like Dashiell Hammett and editors of sensational pulp magazines like Black Mask embellished on actual experiences and fashioned an image of the PI as a compelling, even admirable, necessary evil, doing society's dirty work while adhering to a self-imposed moral code. Scandals, public investigations, and regulations brought the boom years of private agencies to an end in the late 1930s, Walton explains, in the process fully cementing the shift from reality to fantasy."--Publisher's website.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-212) and index.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Enter the detective
Working men and women
Agency business
Detectives at work
Crimes of detectives
Investigation and reform
The storied detective
Making a legend.

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