Sarah,
Re your comments:
> I honestly can't think of any, because neither
> Roderick Alleyn nor Lord Peter Whimsey are as such
> partnered by their respective spouses; just
> influenced by their input.
Lord Peter and Harriet are partnered in Gaudy Night, but that takes place before their marriage. In fact, it ends with Harriet finally accepting ol' Pete's proposal. That admitted, I would even argue that, in Gaudy Night, it's actually Harriet that carries most of the investigative load. Pete's almost a supporting character.
> Oh, wait a
> minute though, there is a couple from Aggie
> Christie, Tommy and Tuppence, who were much
> underused, with only 4 or 5 books about them,
> starting in the interbellum years.
Yeah, but the first Tommy and Tuppence book, The Secret Adversary appeared in 1922, and the short story collection in which they're actually spliced, Partners in Crime, in 1929, both long before Hammett introduced Nick and Nora to the world. And there's very little likelihood that Dame Agatha was influenced by the hard-nosed, oh-so-American Hammett. That's why I deliberately excluded them when I was naming follow-ups to Nick and Nora.
So if that's really your main influence, you might have escaped Hammett's influence, at that.
As a side note, a novel written by a buddy of mine, Max Allan Collins, called The London Blitz Murders, depicts Agatha (doing her wartime bit working as a pharmacist during WW2, which she actually did in real life), working alongside world-famous forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury (who works in the same hospital as Mrs. Christie, which he actually did in real life), in the hunt for "The Blackout Ripper," a real-life serial killer who struck during German bomb attacks early in 1942. In that book, Collins depicts AC as wanting to help in the investigation in order to inject a little grit into her own crime fiction. In a discussion with Dr.Spilsbury, she brings up Hammett, who, she says, she admires for his "admirable concision," but whose treatment of the subject matter doesn't really suit her. Nevertheless, given that he's the competition, she wants the same sort of real life experience Hammett brought to the table. It's interesting to think that Agatha Christie might have read, and considered, Hammett and the other American hard-boiled writers (and their British imitators like James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney), but it strikes me as unlikely.
I haven't mentioned who the actual Blackout Ripper was because, at the time Al first wrote the book, it wasn't that well-known a case in the US, and, in honor of Christie, he plotted the novel as a fair-play whodunit. It's easy to find out who the Ripper was by Googling, but, if you think you might want to read Al's book, don't Google the real-life case, because it will ruin the ending.
As another aside, I used the Blackout Ripper myself in a prose Dick Tracy story I wrote, back when our team was still "auditioning" for the Tracy gig. In it, Tracy and his squad are pursuing a serial killer who's also an historical re-enactor. Among the historical events the villain re-enacts are the murders of real-life serial killers of the past.
> So maybe
> that's my influence... I tend to think of Dashiell
> Hammet, like Raymond Chandler, with the
> hard-boiled soft-centred dick who gets mixed up
> with femmes fatale. I look forward to getting a
> copy of the thin man Classics of course...
> and the film noir genre dominated by Philip
> Marlowe.
> My other main original books also have
> [eventually] a husband and wife solving the
> mysteries, though they take a number of books to
> get as far as getting married. set in the early
> 16th century.
The influence of Nick and Nora on later married sleuths stems primarily (as Lizzy suggest) from the series of films starring Powell and Loy.
Hammett's book is darker than the film version or its sequels, but, that said, it's probably the lightest-hearted thing Hammett ever wrote. No where near the level of noir-ish-ness you get from the Continental Op trilogy or The Maltese Falcom and The Glass Key.
Actually, Hammett's characters were notably unsentimental compared to Marlowe. That's one of the ways in which Chandler is far more influential than Hammett (for all that I regard Hammett as a superior writer; that's taking nothing away from Chandler, who was also a tremendously talented, splendid writer, but Hammett hits me in a way that Chandler never has).
In any case, the light-hearted, witty approach taken by the Thin Man films heavily influenced subsequent depictions of married crime-solvers, particularly the Mr. and Mrs. North radio and TV adaptations of the Lockridges' novels, and the TV series McMillan and Wife, in which Rock Hudson played the San Francisco police chief, who took it upon himself to investigate really interesting murders in the company of his ditzy but charming young wife, played by Susan Saint James.
Nevertheless, from what you say, you seem to have totally escaped even Hammett's indirect influence.
JIM
Re your comments:
> I honestly can't think of any, because neither
> Roderick Alleyn nor Lord Peter Whimsey are as such
> partnered by their respective spouses; just
> influenced by their input.
Lord Peter and Harriet are partnered in Gaudy Night, but that takes place before their marriage. In fact, it ends with Harriet finally accepting ol' Pete's proposal. That admitted, I would even argue that, in Gaudy Night, it's actually Harriet that carries most of the investigative load. Pete's almost a supporting character.
> Oh, wait a
> minute though, there is a couple from Aggie
> Christie, Tommy and Tuppence, who were much
> underused, with only 4 or 5 books about them,
> starting in the interbellum years.
Yeah, but the first Tommy and Tuppence book, The Secret Adversary appeared in 1922, and the short story collection in which they're actually spliced, Partners in Crime, in 1929, both long before Hammett introduced Nick and Nora to the world. And there's very little likelihood that Dame Agatha was influenced by the hard-nosed, oh-so-American Hammett. That's why I deliberately excluded them when I was naming follow-ups to Nick and Nora.
So if that's really your main influence, you might have escaped Hammett's influence, at that.
As a side note, a novel written by a buddy of mine, Max Allan Collins, called The London Blitz Murders, depicts Agatha (doing her wartime bit working as a pharmacist during WW2, which she actually did in real life), working alongside world-famous forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury (who works in the same hospital as Mrs. Christie, which he actually did in real life), in the hunt for "The Blackout Ripper," a real-life serial killer who struck during German bomb attacks early in 1942. In that book, Collins depicts AC as wanting to help in the investigation in order to inject a little grit into her own crime fiction. In a discussion with Dr.Spilsbury, she brings up Hammett, who, she says, she admires for his "admirable concision," but whose treatment of the subject matter doesn't really suit her. Nevertheless, given that he's the competition, she wants the same sort of real life experience Hammett brought to the table. It's interesting to think that Agatha Christie might have read, and considered, Hammett and the other American hard-boiled writers (and their British imitators like James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney), but it strikes me as unlikely.
I haven't mentioned who the actual Blackout Ripper was because, at the time Al first wrote the book, it wasn't that well-known a case in the US, and, in honor of Christie, he plotted the novel as a fair-play whodunit. It's easy to find out who the Ripper was by Googling, but, if you think you might want to read Al's book, don't Google the real-life case, because it will ruin the ending.
As another aside, I used the Blackout Ripper myself in a prose Dick Tracy story I wrote, back when our team was still "auditioning" for the Tracy gig. In it, Tracy and his squad are pursuing a serial killer who's also an historical re-enactor. Among the historical events the villain re-enacts are the murders of real-life serial killers of the past.
> So maybe
> that's my influence... I tend to think of Dashiell
> Hammet, like Raymond Chandler, with the
> hard-boiled soft-centred dick who gets mixed up
> with femmes fatale. I look forward to getting a
> copy of the thin man Classics of course...
> and the film noir genre dominated by Philip
> Marlowe.
> My other main original books also have
> [eventually] a husband and wife solving the
> mysteries, though they take a number of books to
> get as far as getting married. set in the early
> 16th century.
The influence of Nick and Nora on later married sleuths stems primarily (as Lizzy suggest) from the series of films starring Powell and Loy.
Hammett's book is darker than the film version or its sequels, but, that said, it's probably the lightest-hearted thing Hammett ever wrote. No where near the level of noir-ish-ness you get from the Continental Op trilogy or The Maltese Falcom and The Glass Key.
Actually, Hammett's characters were notably unsentimental compared to Marlowe. That's one of the ways in which Chandler is far more influential than Hammett (for all that I regard Hammett as a superior writer; that's taking nothing away from Chandler, who was also a tremendously talented, splendid writer, but Hammett hits me in a way that Chandler never has).
In any case, the light-hearted, witty approach taken by the Thin Man films heavily influenced subsequent depictions of married crime-solvers, particularly the Mr. and Mrs. North radio and TV adaptations of the Lockridges' novels, and the TV series McMillan and Wife, in which Rock Hudson played the San Francisco police chief, who took it upon himself to investigate really interesting murders in the company of his ditzy but charming young wife, played by Susan Saint James.
Nevertheless, from what you say, you seem to have totally escaped even Hammett's indirect influence.
JIM