Lexie Burton

Alexandra Burton

English 1147-101

Christina Black

December 16, 2013

The Scenes of the Crimes Behind Lenses: A Study in Communication Methods

Throughout the evolution of the “detective fiction” genre and its variations, authors have deviated from the formulaic approach to plot, at least on a surface level. It is interesting, though, that while there are patterns in the ways that most of the stories unfold after the initial murder—with variations but still within a set of rules—the way the murders are introduced is different, reflecting evolution from the simple genre plot, perhaps trending towards dramatizations and leaning away from investigation as a central focus. In this project, I explored the scenes in which crimes are introduced, the media through which the characters learn about the crimes, and the amount of detail used in each scene, as a reflection of a new perspective on the genre’s evolution. The apparent tendency, as the genre progressed, toward a smaller distance between reader/witness and crime, and simultaneously toward less detail and higher levels of dramatization, reflects the genre’s movement away from “detection”-focused writing and more toward action and “thrills” as the detective becomes more vulnerable.

The evolution of the crime scene throughout the stories is layered (studying, in chronological order, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Adventures of the Bruce Partington Plans” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré). Early on in the genre, for example in the Poe and Doyle stories, the crime was described from a great physical distance from the actual crime scene. In the “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allen Poe, every known detail of the crime is presented by direct quotes from the newspaper with no filtration – the reader learns the details to the same depth and at the same rate as the detective Dupin; Dupin never visits the crime scene, but learns the facts of the crime through the use of the newspaper. It is possible for both the reader and the detective simultaneously to piece together the details, and only at the end of the story does Dupin reveal the culprit to the reader. Even the confusing, irrelevant, and red-herring-type details are included in the newspaper, because the newspaper as a “lens” through which to see the crime scene does not have the capacity to filter out unnecessary information, but rather includes extraneous and relevant details on equal ground. In addition, this style of narration offers the opportunity for the reader to interact much more with the narrative—as was shown by people’s success with “Assignment 1” in our class, it is possible to solve the crime described with only the text’s information. This lens is also one that offers very little protection from the gruesome nature of the crime scene, perhaps because it is one that provides great physical distance, and therefore protection, from the action of the crime - the distance implies that Dupin is not what Tzvetan Todorov calls the “vulnerable detective” (51) – he is at a great distance from the crime, and nearly all of his “detection” occurs in his mind. Because the lens of the newspaper has wide scope and includes both relevant and irrelevant facts, I attempted to show the crime scene with all of the details described in the newspaper, with the image framed by the outline of a newspaper as a representation of the lens. The use of the newspaper as a lens, because it includes such detail, shows the importance of investigation in “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

In “The Adventures of the Bruce Partington Plans” by Doyle, the use of newspaper as narration is altered in that Watson narrates the facts of the newspaper by conversation with Holmes. In fact it is Watson, who admits he is writing a biography of Holmes (Todorov 45), acting as the lens in Doyle’s story. Even after the newspaper is recounted and Holmes determines to investigate various scenes in person, Watson’s writing is the lens that communicates details to the reader. Watson is the only first-person crime scene narrator (The narrator in Poe’s story is first person, but he does not edit the word-for-word newspaper account found in the text), and therefore he has the ability to remove unnecessary or gruesome details; however, it is Watson’s goal to convey the details and the “reality of the book” that he “explicitly acknowledges that he is writing” (45), as Todorov explains. Therefore, I depicted the “lens” in this case as a book – Watson’s writing. It is apparent that the investigation remains central, however, as Sherlock “play[s] the game for the game’s own sake” (Doyle 43), focusing mainly on detection.

It is interesting that the two more violent crime scenes – in “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” one victim is shoved up a chimney and the other is decapitated and thrown out a window, and in “The Adventures of the Bruce Partington Plans,” Cadogan West is bludgeoned to death – are in the older stories, whose scenes are depicted from the greatest distance but also with the greatest detail, and through the least filtering lenses ]. This emphasizes Dupin and Holmes’s focus on detection; as Lehman says, “the more ‘outré’ the crime, the easier it is to solve” (xv), and the two most “outré” crimes out of the five investigated in this project were those in the earliest works. In addition, these “outré” crimes did not put the detectives in danger because the detectives were not yet “vulnerable” the way that more modern detectives (Todorov 51); Holmes and Dupin do not visit crime scenes at which there are bodies, and they stay protected by the lenses of the newspapers.

The three more recent crimes were much less “outré” in that all three were murders by gunshot. In all three of these crime scenes, the investigation of the crime becomes less integral to the story, while the action and the development of the story become more important. In addition, the image of the crime scene is displayed from much closer range, allowing for dramatic effect. In Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the crime scene is described to the reader and to Spade by means of a conversation –the action of the crime, though Spade does visit the scene, is communicated by the police-detectives describing it to Spade. The distance between the characters, who are present at the crime scene, and the actual body is much smaller than it had been in the older stories, but Spade still declines to look at his partner’s body.  For this reason, I depicted the crime scene framed by conversation bubbles – Spade’s choice to not look at the body makes his conversation with the police-detective the “lens.” This lens is a trained detective, which suggests that only relevant details would be communicated, implying less focus on detection and reader participation – in the end Spade reveals that he may have known all along who the culprit had been, but the focus is on the way the story and its action unfolds.

For the first time out of the books we read for this class, in Our Man in Havana, Wormold, the main character, actually looks at the murder victim, his good friend Hasselbacher. The narration directly depicts the dead man for the first time out of the texts we read, and it also shows an eyewitness who saw the death occur, looking “sick and afraid” (189) to add dramatic effect. In addition, Hasselbacher’s dead eyes are described to dramatize the occurrence. Wormold learns of what happened through two lenses, in this case: the lens of his own eyes at the crime scene and looking at the body, unlike Spade, and the “lens” of the conversation that recounts to him what had happened – for this reason, I chose to depict the crime scene in Our Man in Havana framed by both conversation bubbles and by an eye; the lens is not focused on detail relevant to investigation because he does not need to investigate to find the culprit – he knows it is Carter. Instead, the lens focuses on the human effects, such as a “dead face” (190). His proximity to the crime scene, then, decreases the importance of the investigation and increases his vulnerability – he actually gets shot at later in the novel – and therefore the importance of action.

Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the first of the characters to witness a death take place – Karl, his informant, is shot by an East German sentry.  Karl’s death is dramatized to a degree that Leamas “hoped to God he was dead” (6) as it happened – detail for investigation is not necessary because Leamas is the witness and knows the culprit; however, Leamas’s proximity to the crime scene implies a much greater vulnerability, further evidenced by his travel behind the Iron Curtain, torture, and ultimate death. In my drawing, I attempted to depict the almost theatrical action and movement of the scene by showing the bicycle and the victim’s feet, implying a sudden end to his movement. This dramatic scene, at which Leamas is present, is a strong indication of the genre’s trend away from the centrality of investigation in the plot. While it is still the case that the “plot is triggered by a murder,” as Lehman puts it (xiv), the investigation does not take precedent in the story because Leamas knows the identity of the killer, which is hardly of interest to him. The story’s interest, instead, comes not from investigation but from action around Leamas, who is in the center of the danger and the thrills.

In my investigation of the crime scenes, with each depiction seen through a “lens” to represent the ways crime scenes are depicted, I found that the most horrific and “outré” crime scenes were those depicted with the most detail but also with the furthest physical distance between the crime scene and the detectives. The lenses where the characters are present at the crime scene have less investigation-oriented detail and more action, because of the genre’s apparent shift away form investigation as its primary purpose. The proximity of the characters to the crimes, and the greater filtration of their close-up lenses, implies the greater vulnerability of the characters, and the genre’s trend toward “thrills” and thrillers rather than investigation.

Though it was challenging to make accurate depictions of the crime scenes due to lack of artistic talent, I found it very interesting to attempt to take a description from writing and make it into a picture, because usually the process occurs the other way around. Sometimes it is very easy for me, while I read, to be lulled into laze about creating detailed mental pictures of settings, people, etc., but rather I just pay attention to the words, which is likely an unproductive way of reading detective stories because of the way they intend to allow reader participation and investigation. Because of this, it was a very interesting exercise for me to force myself to mentally, and then physically, create pictures assembled from the words on the pages.  Also, though this is slightly unrelated, I recently found an Oscar Wilde quote,  “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” which I thought was interesting in the context of trying to imitate the words on a page through artistic expression. In addition, I found it inspiring, throughout the process of reading these works over the course of the semester, that though there may be a “formula” for the plot, there is still such variation possible.

Works Cited

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan.” The Adventure of the Dancing Men and Other Sherlock Holmes Stories. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. Toronto: Dover, 1997. 38-62. Print

Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Print.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: First Vintage Crime, 1992. Print.

Le Carré, John. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Penguin Group: New York, 2012. Print.

Lehman, David. The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection. New York: The University of Michigan Press, 2000. xiii-xxvii. Print

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Typology of Detective Fiction.” The Poetics of Prose. 1966. 44-52. Print.