The novel rode out of Spain on the horse and donkey of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and the modern short story had its early masters in Russia, France and England. But the hard-boiled detective was born in America. His popularity has remained in force for half a century. He can be seen on countless shelves of paperbacks and hardcovers, and he has appeared on prime time since the first vacuum tube was plugged in. The TV series Spenser: For Hire and Mike Hammer are two of his latest hangouts. As he was in the films of the '40s, so he is today, in Raymond Chandler's memorable phrase, a man "who is neither tarnished nor afraid" as he walks down America's mean streets.
Good cases have been made for locating his origins in the boot steps of the lonesome pioneer. Robert B. Parker, creator of Spenser, a private investigator so sure of himself that he needs only one name, even wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the subject. According to the traditional ideal, to survive with dignity on the American frontier required a touch of ruthlessness and a personal code of honor. "When the wilderness disappeared at the end of the 19th century," says Parker, the hero "became a man, alone, facing an urban wilderness." A more precise definition of the breed came naturally enough from Chandler, the American-born, British-educated creator of Philip Marlowe, the detective who got more similes to the mile than anybody before or since ("as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food"). Laid down in his essay The Simple Art of Murder, Chandler's description of the fictional American detective has the power of an ecclesiastical oath: "He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."
These are the essentials for obstinate individualism, a national trait elevated to a romance that not only endures but thrives. The literary descendants of Chandler and his contemporaries James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett have unleashed stalkers of the urban wildernesses across the country. Parker and George V. Higgins cover Boston; Elmore Leonard and Loren D. Estleman have a lock on Detroit; Stephen Greenleaf and Bill Pronzini have staked out San Francisco, and Washington is in the hands of Ross Thomas. In Cincinnati, the territory belongs to Jonathan Valin.