9 - Post-war American police fiction

Summary

Like the poor, in the world of crime fiction cops have always been with us. From the beginning we find Sergeant Cuff, Inspector Bucket, M. Lecoq, to say nothing of Poe's Prefect, or Doyle's Lestrade. In the Golden Age they multiply - Inspectors Alleyn, Appleby, Grant, and Parker, to name only a few. Across the Atlantic, Ellery Queen's dad was a cop, and even Dashiell Hammett portrayed police officers in a sympathetic light in his early stories. But nobody claims that the presence of a police officer makes police fiction. Indeed, in most detective fiction written before 1950, police officers play a decidedly subordinate role - as foils or representatives of the state clearing the boards at the end. Even if main characters wear badges, the fact that they are cops has no impact on their characterisation; they act like any other amateur or private detective, unfettered by bureaucracy and law.