Is it time to retire the defective detective?

A post at Kill Zone Blog: Is It Time To Retire The Defective Detective?

My instant response: YES YES YES It was time to retire this painfully cliched protagonist AT LEAST twenty years ago.

Let me tell you about the detective in this gritty, realistic noir-ish detective novel: He is about fifty. He is alone. He is an alcoholic, semi-recovered, or self-destructive in other ways. His wife left him and took the children. Probably she left him because she wanted to be the center of his attention 24/7, never mind that someone was killing girls or whatever. She could not cope with the detective working on actual crimes when he should have been arranging special candlelit dinners for two. This shows how sensitive she is and how insensitive he is. He has almost no relationship with his children, who appreciate how sensitive mom is compared to dad. Now here he is, as I said, alone. He barely gets through is days. He is cynical and hopefully competent, though maybe not.

This is Everydetective. I encountered this exact detective innumerable times, in every single gritty, realistic, noir-ish detective novel I picked up until I completely stopped reading that kind of novel. My impression is that the wife is usually a bigger component of this Everydetective’s current life in movies, so the audience can watch the marriage crash and burn on stage, because wow, that’s so much fun.

This is PJ Parrish. This is actually two coauthors. What do they say?

Now, we all love a flawed protagonist. Their personal journey is a parallel track that runs along side the main murder plot and creates interest and empathy. But man, does everyone have to be addicted, divorced, friendless, childless, and beset with demons from their screwed up childhoods? Do we really need another detective whose only steady relationships are with Cutty Sark and John Coltrane?

Spoiler: WE DO NOT LOVE THIS PARTICULAR FLAWED PROTAGONIST. We are very, very tired of Everydetective.

Whether it’s alcohol, drugs, gambling, or just plain paralyzing depression or grief, a large segment of the mystery writing community frequently writes broken protags. Some of these characters have been very critically successful. I have sort of a different take. I tend to regard emotionally damaged protags as a bit of a crutch.

Response: YOU THINK?

PJ Parrish then offers a quick discussion of cliches vs tropes. Without going into the distinction, I will just say briefly that in my opinion, a cliche is a badly done trope. No tropes get old if they are handled well. Readers who like whatever trope will like endless iterations as long as they are handled well. This is no doubt true for this kind of Everydetective as well; it’s just that I find that character unendurable and the surrounding characters equally unendurable and the plotlines that follow Everydetective through the destruction of his life worst of all.

I doubt I will read anything in the gritty, realistic, noir-ish detective genre ever again. I know absolutely for sure that if I am reading a detective novel of any description, the moment Everydetective picks up a bottle in the hope of drowning his sorrows, mentions his divorced wife or his estranged daughter — it’s always a daughter — or wakes up alone in a grungy setting, I’m not only done with that particular novel, but with that author.

In other words: it’s like grimdark. I’m one hundred percent not interested and I never will be.

Also: unlike grimdark, I don’t think it needed to be that way. Grimdark is intrinsically grimdark. But gritty, realistic, noir-ish detectives do not have to be Everydetective. That, in my opinion, IS INDEED a crutch.

For a less diatribe-ish take, you can click through and read the linked post.

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