The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction - John Walton - Books - The University of Chicago Press - 9780226308265 - November 10, 2015
In case cover and title do not match, the title is correct

John Walton
The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction

Get an email once the item is available
Do you have a profile? Log in
Get notified about new John Walton releases

Our customers say:

14-day return policy in accordance with European consumer protection law
Top ranking on Trustpilot
Add to your iMusic wish list

Not rated yet

Also available as:

Private detectives and detective agencies played a major role in American history from 1870 to 1940. Pinkerton, Burns, Thiels, and the smaller independents were a multi-million dollar industry, hired out by many if not most American corporations, who needed services of surveillance, strike breaking, and labor espionage. Not only is John Walton's account the first sustained history of this industry, it is also the first book to trace the ways in which the private detective came to occupy a cherished place in popular imagination. Walton paints lively portraits of these mythical figures from Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant eccentric, to Sam Spade, the hard-boiled hero of Dashiell Hammett's best-selling tales. There's a great question lurking in here: how did pulp magazine editors shape the image of the hard-boiled private eye, and what sorts of interplay obtained between the actual records (agency files, memoirs) of these motley individuals in real life and the legend of the private detective in mass-market fiction? This history of the private eyes and this account of how the detective industry and the culture industry played off of each other is a first. Walton show us, in clean clear outline, the figure of the classical private eye, and he shows us further how the memory of this iconic figure was sustained in fiction, radio, film, literary societies, product promotions, adolescent entertainments, and a subculture of detective enthusiasts.

232 pages

Media Books     Hardcover Book   (Book with hard spine and cover)
Released November 10, 2015
ISBN13 9780226308265
Publishers The University of Chicago Press
Pages 232
Dimensions 241 × 161 × 24 mm   ·   452 g

More by John Walton

Show all

More from the same publisher

See all of John Walton ( e.g. Paperback Book , DVD and Hardcover Book )