Eli Solt

From Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and beyond, the literary genre of detective fiction has undergone some significant changes since its inception in the mid-19th century. The changes have occurred in the lead detective as well as the supporting cast around him and can be accounted for by an increase in urbanization and changes in societal views in post-depression America. The most widespread and remarkable evolution was the change from the so called “classical” detective to the “hardboiled” private eye.

One of many transformations the detective character experienced during this period was a change in his position in relation to the social world around him and how that position relates to how well the detective can solve a mystery.

One aspect of this that is explored thoroughly is sexuality (or lack thereof). In regards to the classical detective, W.H. Auden writes in “The Guilty Vicarage” that, “In his sexual life, the detective must be either celibate or happily married”. On the other hand, the hardboiled detective often seems to express his sexual desire for other women, including the “Femme Fatale”, much more freely. A notable example of this is the smooth-talking private eye, Sam Spade, in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Despite his talent for investigation and frequently obvious displays of masculinity, Spade finds himself more often than not under the spell of the mysterious girl named Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who shows up at his office one day asking for his help. Though never completely trusting her, he does attempt to work with and try to get information from her despite her constant efforts to seduce him (which sometimes work). These ideas are not uniform among all detective stories and there can be deviations and changes from this formula used to in create unique characters and storylines. The detective genre has, to some degree, become oversaturated in the past century and more and more elements are becoming cliché to the point where the outcome of stories aren’t difficult to see.

This change in formula from the classical detective to the hard-boiled one and beyond reflects the growing necessity of the genre to adapt and use more original characters and ideas. One example of this the character of Agent Cooper in the television show Twin Peaks. He is a very unique and intriguing character because his methods of detection are often called into question and although on some occasions he appears distant and separate from the social bubble of the town, he is not immune to the allure of other women. I believe that a more open sexuality for the detective and a broader acceptance in inclusion into normal society can both help and hinder certain parts of the investigation as it does for Sam Spade and to varying degrees Cooper’s character as well. Although chasing distractions like the femme fatale can sometimes unnecessarily complicate predicaments, it can also lead to the procurement of more information and clues which can help the detective solve the case as long as he remains as objective as possible, avoiding the deceptive allure of the women trying to distract him.

 Before looking at how social lives affects the detective skills of Sam Spade and Agent Cooper, it is important to take note of all the differences between the classical and hardboiled detective and how both characters represent different important archetypal shifts in method and investigation.

Some of the most important qualities of the classical detective are that he is for the most part emotionally withdrawn, anti-social, removed from society, occasionally misogynistic, and celibate (or happily married). These traits are the classical detective’s “power” in allowing him to remain objective and solve the case. In a way, he separates himself from the outside world entirely in order to get a different picture than what everyone else can see and not get caught up in the small drama that the police invest so much time in. His asexuality allows him to avoid overlooking any particular suspect or fall prey to any seductive influence that may affect his ability to see the truth.

The hardboiled detective, while sharing a few of these traits, differs in many regards. Typically, he is more emotionally engaged: he is actively looking for sexual activity and desires the femme fatale, he expresses a certain resistance to domesticity, and he is not afraid to get violent and dirty in order to get answers. Some similarities the hardboiled detective shares with the classical detective are that he is usually anti-social and he trusts his own instincts more than anything else. Naturally, given some of his personality traits, the hardboiled detective is more inclined to (whether intentionally or not) let some subjectivity enter the case and affect the outcome.

At the root of everything, both the classical and the hardboiled detective share the same end goal: they want to solve the crime. In this regard, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon is not so different from Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. He uses his personal talents in investigation and problem solving to discover clues and eventually connect the dots. Where he differs is his personality and the manner in which he goes about collecting clues to reach that end goal.

Sam Spade is not a character that the reader is supposed to immediately connect with. In the opening of the novel Hammett even writes, “He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan” (Hammett 3). His gruff and cynical nature makes him appear almost like an anti-hero, although his unquenchable desire to find the truth and eventually do the “right” thing is what will eventually redeem him in the reader’s eyes in the end. However, we can immediately see the shift from the “always moral” classical detective in the very first chapter of the book as Spade’s love for money is shown by the ease at which Brigid O’Shaughnessy bribes him to take up the case. His internal code of morality is ambiguous for most of the novel and in the chase for the Falcon he demonstrates his ability to bend the rules on more than one occasion to get his way.

An important literary method used by Hammett in The Maltese Falcon is the use of a third person objective point of view when laying out the events of the story. There is no free indirect discourse in the book and the reader never gets to truly know Spade’s internal feelings. This is an important technique because it creates emotional distance between characters and the audience and makes the interpretation of their physical reactions even more crucial to understanding how they feel. Because the reader doesn’t know exactly how Spade is feeling beyond physical descriptions and reactions, we don’t know how far he would be willing to go to accomplish his goals. This gives him a more mysterious and unpredictable presence in the novel. This is a character trait that is seen in another important detective character: Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks.

 Agent Cooper is a bit of an oddity when it comes to detectives.

He blends the classical and hardboiled attitudes while still mixing his own twists in as well. When it comes to analyzing his character and the role he plays in solving the crime and the genre as a whole, we must look at him in relation to the world that he is placed in.

He arrives in Twin Peaks to investigate the sudden murder of Laura Palmer and is immediately seen as an outsider. The town is incredibly small and tight-knit, leaving him unaware of some connections between people and events. To get information he must begin to form relationships with the people of the town—a task that comes with some difficulty as many locals don’t trust him. His path into these connections is through the local police officer Harry Truman who the town trusts more. The parallel with Sam Spade is that the audience never really feels like they know who Cooper is. We get glimpses of his private thoughts and ideas when he speaks to his secretary Diane on the recorder but his often absurd and irrational methods leave us unsure what he is going to do next. His unpredictable nature shows how unique and surreal his methods are in relation to the world around him. Like the classical detective, he is constantly piecing together random details and occurrences that he sees.. However, the things that he takes note of are often completely random and seemingly irrelevant to the case as a whole. For example, he mentions trees a lot and notices what kind they are and how they look. From the very first entrance into the town as he is driving in, he talks into his tape recorder about how magical the trees look. He also is constantly referring to delicious food items like doughnuts, coffee, and “damn fine cherry pie.” These out-of-the-blue comments are usually light and are meant to be taken in a comedic manner that makes his character more endearing.

However, Cooper is not intending to be funny, casting greater mystery over his procedures and making the audience wonder what on earth he is talking about. These comments also further distance him from the normal social world that he exists in and draws connections to Sherlock Holmes in potentially having a minor mental disorder that makes him pay attention to these things. Unlike Holmes and even Hercule Poirot to some extent, Cooper seems to have less of an ego and doesn’t use that as a driving force in solving the murder. If he cares at all about his reputation, he almost never mentions it. He is there to do his duty and not bask in the limelight. In the corrupt and back-stabbing town that Twin Peaks turns out to be, Cooper creates a moral backbone for which the audience can relate to in the chaos and confusion of the other characters. Despite everything, he still cares about what is wrong and what is right; perhaps the most important feature of a good detective.

Presiding in a post-hardboiled universe and a postmodern setting, it could be argued that Cooper is a commentary (and possibly a satirical take) on the detective character in general. Like Sam Spade, Cooper has a secretary, Diane, though her presence is never seen in the original run of the show and he only speaks to her through a cassette recorder, showing the emotional distance in their relationship. The parody continues when Cooper takes his bizarre methods to the extreme in several instances, like when he finds clues inside vivid dreams that he has.

His inquisitive and over analytic nature mocks and hyperbolizes a character like Sherlock Holmes who is almost entirely reliant on his natural ability to use logic to deduce a conclusion. In order for Holmes to use his logic, he needs a logical world in which to work in. Though surrealism, David Lynch presents Twin Peaks as a world that is far from logical and consistent—the reason why Cooper’s odd methods are so necessary. He uses his feelings and intuition to find answers. He pursues seemingly irrelevant and pointless ideas and yet he does so with a consistency and methodology that makes sense to him, only possible in a postmodern universe where there is no absolute truth, only the illusion of it. Whatever detection methods are used to solve the case, quite often detectives find their skills pale and fall to pieces when they are faced with the ultimate deterrent: the femme fatale.

 A “femme fatale” is a female character that appears predominantly in hardboiled detective fiction as a foil or roadblock for the lead detective as he tries to solve the case. She is usually a very attractive woman who tries to distract or disarm the hero for her own personal gain (she is often involved in the crime in some manner). In French, the term “femme fatale” literally translates to “deadly woman” and as its translation suggests; to truly give in to the femme fatale means almost certain death.

This is also the case in The Maltese Falcon as any man who trusts Brigid O’Shaughnessy somehow ends up dead. From the very first description of her as she comes into Spade’s office we can see just how striking and glamorous she is:

“A young woman came through the doorway. She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing. She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made” (Hammett 4).

Along with her apparent beauty, the part from this passage that stands out the most is the description of her eyes which are described as “shy” and “probing”. The fact that they are probing shows that she is constantly alert and knows what she is doing. Brigid O’Shaughnessy is one of the most mysterious characters in the entire book and the reader never really gets to know her or her motivations. The one thing that is clear is that she loves money; although it may not be for conventional reasons like the joy in purchasing things. Her existence and power that she holds relies almost entirely on her ability to seduce men to make them do basically whatever she wants them to do. Perhaps getting the money that she desires would allow her to be free from that way of living. Her entire life is a lie and from the very beginning, even after Spade repeatedly makes it clear that he needs her to be honest and direct with him, she lies at just about every turn. I believe that he remains dubious of her for most of the story but is not immune to his feelings for her like when he rushes to save her from a non-existent danger near the end.

Spade’s desire for her can also help him in the case in that she is a means of getting information he wouldn’t have been able to obtain otherwise. It gives him an “inside” route that would not be attainable if the detective set himself outside of the subjective world of others. Spade uses this to his advantage and even tries to trick her into revealing more information than she wants to on several occasions. For example, when he mentions Joel Cairo to her to see if she knows anything about the situation.  Brigid tenses, revealing that she has some connection. However, she is smart enough to compose herself quickly again. She goes to the fireplace and then sits back down again without any worry on her face. Spade can see right through her. "You're good. You're very good” (Hammett 56).

Sexuality is not dealt with a great deal in regards to Agent Cooper’s character in Twin Peaks, though one might argue that its lack of attention reflects the idea that Cooper is asexual like the classical detective. I would argue that while Cooper tends not to be as distracted by women as a Sam Spade character is , he is also not immune to their seduction either. While Twin Peaks never establishes a true femme fatale, the clearest candidate would be Audrey Horne who flirts with Cooper on multiple occasions. At multiple points throughout the show, it is unclear whether her attraction to Cooper revolves around her desire to influence or interfere with his investigation in some manner. She is a suspicious figure because her father is Ben Horne who is a shady business man and could have potentially been involved in Laura’s murder. In the end however, her character is more of a red herring in that she never really causes him any troubles and appears to genuinely have wanted to assist in the case. Their relationship never really goes anywhere and it appears Cooper was never all that interested in her, despite making attempts to see her on more than one occasion. This goes back to the idea that the investigation was more important to him than anything.. If that was going to happen, Cooper wasn’t going to “play the sap” for her just as Spade avoids doing with O’Shaughnessy at the end of The Maltese Falcon.

The hardboiled and post-hardboiled detective universe often uses sexuality and social connection as a metaphor for a modern capitalist society. Cooper’s mention of random objects could be seen as a commentary on goods and materialism in our current culture. Their lack of importance to the case further demonstrates their lack of importance to our lives or overall happiness. The “out of place” nature in which they are mentioned shows how accustomed we have become to taking these items for granted. Nobody in the town ever mentions them like Cooper does and they find it odd. This goes back to the significance of Cooper being an outsider. He is the only one who can see the blatant absurdity of it all. However, he isn’t an outsider in the sense of Dupin or Poirot who exist with more aristocratic identities. Cooper, like an average middle-class member of society, does not distance himself from these mundane objects, he embraces them, allowing himself to enjoy the fruits of the modern world like anyone else.

This also can be seen in The Maltese Falcon in a more subtle manner. Sam Spade is constantly shown smoking, drinking, or desiring the attention of O'Shaughnessy or Iva Archer. He cares about these fleeting objects and desires without giving much regard to a greater sense of responsibility or attachment. These materialistic ideas also represent the social world in which we live, making the idea that a detective is separate from this world even more important for his ability to solve cases and reveals a crucial change from classical to hardboiled detection. It shows how we value people and real relationships less than the frivolous pursuits of happiness in a postmodern society.

 The detective character can perhaps be accounted for as a result of his environment and world he works in and not the other way around. For example, the hardboiled universe is incredibly corrupt and violent, leading Sam Spade to have to act tougher and trust no one to survive. The distinctions between the criminals and the police are blurry at best; the distinctions between right and wrong are even harder to see. The only person the detective can really trust is himself, often making the world difficult to navigate through. In The Maltese Falcon Spade sometimes seems to be at the mercy of every pretty woman whom he crosses. Iva Archer could almost be interpreted as another minor femme fatale although she never really tries to interfere with the investigation and after Miles is killed she doesn’t hold any blackmailing power over him. But through Spade’s affair with Iva we can question his ethics and wonder if it will affect his role in the crime at all.

Cooper, though appearing more innocent, is not immune to the environment he resides in either. He slowly begins to assimilate to life in Twin Peaks over time, while still carrying his sporadic and unorthodox methods of investigation with him. He wants to protect the familiar world that he had come to know and love, despite that fact that he doesn’t want to change it. Agent Cooper is a much needed response to the increasing use of clichés in detective fiction and provides a fresh look into what the character can be, outside of the restrictions of the realistic world. I believe that detective’s more open sexual feelings can both hinder and help him in his investigation. The femme fatale creates an added risk that wouldn’t be there if he was devoid of sexual desire, however, in the dark and corrupt world that he must work in, it is almost impossible to remain completely objective and “innocent” in the pursuit of true justice. It appears a “good” detective needs to be anti-social or distant from the normal world, despite its attempts to suck him in.

Works Cited

Auden, Wystan H. “The Guilty Vicarage.” Harper's, May 1948, pp. 1–4.

Frost, Mark, and David Lynch. Twin Peaks, Season 1-2, ABC, Showtime, 1990-91.

Hammett, Dashiell.The Maltese Falcon. The Albatross, 1932.

“Twin Peaks Wiki.” Twin Peaks Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia, twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Twin_Peaks_Wiki.

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