The Detective Fantasy
In my previous essay comparing Foucault’s description of the modern disciplinary apparatus to dystopian literature, I said that I rarely pair my fiction with non-fiction. It’s not often that my interests align so neatly. But fate (in the form of my partner) intervened again and delivered yet another work of literary theory that readily matched with recent readings.
I came home one day and found The Novel and the Police on my nightstand. Written by Professor D.A. Miller and originally published in 1988, this work examines the 19th century English detective novel through Foucault’s disciplinary framework described in Discipline & Punish. Having recently read and written about Foucault’s work, I thought it appropriate to apply Miller’s analysis to a contemporary novel that also shared space on my nightstand: Jim Butcher’s Storm Front, the first book in the low fantasy Dresden Files series, first published in 2000.
I should begin with a serious caveat. Miller’s work is very much focused on English novels from the 1800s, relying heavily on Dickens, Collins, among other period authors. And in many ways, the tropes within these genres are far removed from those in Butcher’s fantasy. But thinking about the idea of a “detective” across centuries, cultures, and genres is, I believe, a worthwhile endeavor. I’ve also got a slew of modern British crime series, like Luther or Broadchurch, sitting in the back of my head and I’m curious if the moody DCI in a trench coat has a precursor.
One of Foucault’s important contributions to our understanding of the modern disciplinary apparatus is the development of the delinquent. Foucault describes how the justice system fabricates the delinquent as a being distinct from the criminal, forming a pathological entity, a target whose guilt is a foregone conclusion, condemned by the science of strict scrutiny due to inferior social class, caste, race, ethnicity, or any of a number of human categories used to (“scientifically”) differentiate and hierarchize groups of people. The creation of the delinquent allows society to point to, and punish, a particular behavior (and, thereby, a distinct social class) as both a show of juridical force and to obscure other crimes committed by the privileged, powerful, and wealthy. No one is paying attention to the factory owner dumping toxins into a river when there’s a (fictional) pathologized super criminal skulking in a dark alley.
Expanding on Foucault, Miller points to the “coherence of delinquency” via consolidation, using the criminal underworld in Dickens’ Oliver Twist as an example (p. 4). The delinquents are bound together--geographically, as a milieu; socially, as a class (i.e. a gang)--in their crimes. In effect, crime becomes something that happens over there, to others, to the less worthy outside polite society, effectively effacing the crimes of the rich or even the general presence of criminality at all levels across the social spectrum.
But the curious thing, Miller notes, is that in the detective novels of the 19th century, many of the scene-setting crimes happen in and around high society. Suddenly, a crime is no longer a problem of impoverished pickpockets and thieves. It is a problem of and in the manse and manor. There is an odor of “delinquency” in the bourgeoise community (p. 36).
This, then, opens the door to the law, but not necessarily a regular police force. Think of Edgar Allen Poe’s creation, C. Auguste Dupin, from The Murders in the Rue Morgue, or his descendants, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Christie’s Hercule Poirot. While traditional police forces may harass and raid the poor houses of 19th century England, it is the well-to-do sleuth, not the badge-wearing cop, that steps in to save the day. It is often a law-adjacent individual that enters the aristocratic homes of the elite. Even under the cloud of suspicion, they are afforded this privilege.
When they arrive, these genius detectives bring a curious skill: “observation” (p. 28). Miller draws a line between the unflinching, inductive eye of the amateur sleuth with that of the panopticon prison, developed by Jeremy Benthem and analyzed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish. As a brief description, the panopticon is a prison of unique design wherein the inmate is isolated from other prisoners (to prevent the spread of criminality) and remains perpetually in sight of a central watchtower, but whose guard is always invisible from the inmate’s view. By keeping the warden hidden, the prisoner is never fully aware if they are being watched, and therefore apt to internalize the disciplinary ideals of the institution; they will self-regulate their own behavior knowing that there is a possibility they are being surveilled, and could therefore be punished for even the smallest infraction. The panopticon is a CCTV system in a surveillance state.
Miller connects the ideas inherent in the panopticon with the kind of acute observation and deductive (usually inductive) reasoning of our 19th century detectives. They see everything. The slightest clue provides a wealth of information. Indeed, they are able to read the community--its secrets and its lies--like an open book. And this, again, upsets the natural order of the upper crust. The rich and powerful are not used to such an invasive presence. Miller points to a “double infringement of the social contract,” whereby an outsider is not only able to observe the traditionally unobservable (i.e. rich people in their castles), but also judges the community by rules other than those it would normally use to regulate itself (p. 38).
But this lays bare a quirk within the detective genre. For a mystery novel to be worth reading, it needs, obviously, mystery. A detective, no matter how genius, cannot simply walk through the front door and provide the reader with all the answers right off the bat. No, the case must unfold at a pleasant pace, requiring new players and new motives, a thickening of the plot. There is a “power . . . in the irrelevant” (p. 28). Here, we step back from our fictional world and into the craft itself: the writer pours ink into clues, distractions, dead ends, red herrings, a maze of mystery. “The function of secrecy,” Miller says in the book’s concluding chapter, “is not to conceal knowledge, so much as to conceal the knowledge of the knowledge.” The allure of the detective novel is not strictly figuring out what was hidden but why it was hidden, and how one mystery occludes another.
Now to turn toward Jim Butcher’s fantasy novel, Storm Front. Here comes the synopsis. Spoilers ahead. The Dresden Files series follows Harry Dresden, a professional wizard living in modern day Chicago. He works as a magical private investigator of sorts. His skills are sought after by the police and private citizens alike. In the same day, Dresden accepts a case to find a woman’s missing husband and is asked by the police to solve a murder that could only have been committed using magic, specifically two lovers getting their hearts torn out, burst through ribcages. The first book in the long-running series introduces us to a cast of magical beings like vampires, demons, a sentient skull encyclopedia named Bob, among others. Dresden eventually learns--to no one’s surprise--that the missing husband is responsible for the murdered lovers, among other deaths scattered about Chicago. The newly minted magician is creating a drug called ThreeEye that temporarily gives users magical sight, which is perhaps a bit like LSD. The murders were part of an effort by the drug-peddling magician to force the Chicago mafia off his turf. Dresden faces the evil wizard in his lair, a lovely lake house, and beats him nearly at the cost of his own life. But he’s saved by his own magical parole officer at the last moment. Happy ending.
I’ll start by saying that The Dresden Files remind me a lot more of the hardboiled detective novels of the early 20th century than those described in The Novel and the Police. Miller works with Oliver Twist and The Moonstone. Butcher’s novel feels more in line with Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon; Harry Dresden might as well be Sam Spade with a wand (staff, technically). But there is still much to be excavated from Miller’s approach to the detective genre.
For starters, the role of magic in the world of Storm Front--and perhaps all low fantasy-- functions rather like the concept of delinquency. Magic, its users and the beings touched by it, are cordoned off from the human world. They occupy their own geographical (magical?) space and time. Magic happens over there, separate and sequestered from the day-to-day goings-on of normal humans.
Inherent in this division is a veil of ignorance between Dresden’s clients (i.e. the police and the worried wife) and the magical community with which he interacts. Dresden serves as the bridge between the two worlds, and in that way, is always the outsider, the interloper, the one that brings the opposing world’s rules and biases to bear. When Dresden speaks to the police, he is there as a representative of the magical community. When he speaks to magical beings, he’s all too human. No matter where he goes, Dresden is the standard bearer for alternative perspectives and rule sets, judging others by terms outside of their traditional norms or modes of understanding.
Additionally, Dresden sees. He is a wizard, after all, gifted with the Wizard Sight. What looks impossible to the police, hearts torn out of chests, is a simple math problem to him, solved with the assistance of a talking skull. He can literally see and sense magic. Here again, he produces a kind of discomfort, as if he can enter the minds of those around him, judging them by the things only he can observe, much as Sherlock Holmes uses forensic science to deduce everything about a person with a glance.
But as I said, there a vast gulf between Miller’s theory and Butcher’s work, and that’s where some of the fun stuff happens. Again, Miller analyzed the 19th century detective novel, an amateur sleuth investigating a curious crime in a rather narrow fictional setting. The whole city of Chicago becomes a crime scene of sorts in Storm Front. There are murders scattered about, missing sex workers, summoned demons, fantastical storms, and orgies used to summon great and terrible magics. This is decidedly not Murder on the Orient Express, with its one crime on a moving train, nor the manor and moors from Sherlock Holmes’ The Hound of the Baskervilles. The “world” of 19th century fiction was confined, but with works of fantasy, the world is--by its very nature--vast, a character unto itself. It cries out to be explored, developed, explained, and is not simply a function of the plot, driven by the need to slowly unravel the mystery. Every sentence is a clue in a detective novel. But the reader trying to unravel the enigma at the heart of a fantasy-detective novel must consider whether the author included certain details as part of the worldbuilding project or as breadcrumbs toward the big reveal.
Another sharp departure is the fact that while 19th century detective novels focused on the intrusion of law into bourgeois society, the detective’s presence in a fantasy novel is about the intrusion of law (i.e. rules) into a fantasy world. To narrow The Dresden Files down a bit further, I’d categorize it as urban fantasy of the secret world type. In this specific genre, the real world (i.e. our normal human world) exists side by side with the magical world, usually in a modern city setting, but separated from it, often by the veil of ignorance. I’d say China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series falls into this category, along with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and even J.K. Rowling’s Potterverse. So, in a “mundane” world brimming with magic, how does law--as represented by the detective--intervene?
Much as with the detective fiction described by Miller, Harry Dresden is not exactly a pure hearted white hat copper. He’s actually a bit of a (juvenile) delinquent himself, having committed a magical crime early in life and is now on permanent parole. He’s allowed to practice magic only under strict rules; Dresden is clearly not a magical “beat cop”.
As with many characters outside the law, or only adjacent to it, Dresden’s role is a distillation of the law’s powerlessness, its failure. To put it more finely, the laws of humans and the laws of magic are fundamentally irreconcilable without Dresden’s presence. There are rules in the magic world just as there are rules for the human world, much as there are two sets of laws for the rich and the poor. But what happens at the crossroads? What happens when worlds collide and that collision is a crime?
As I said, Dresden is the bridge, a necessary quirk. The law enforcement entities--in both spheres--are unwilling or unable to solve the crimes of Chicago. CPD certainly is ill equipped to deal with magical murders and ThirdEye drug problems contaminating their streets. And what little we hear of a magical law enforcement agency--like the one that employs Dresden’s parole officer--seems to suggest that they are too arrogant, inept, or uninterested in addressing the magical crimes infesting the Windy City. Dresden, and only Dresden, stands in the center, a liminal figure straddling legal/criminal and magical/mundane worlds.
That leaves our law-adjacent magical private eye to weigh two systems of law: human or wizard. Perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes of placing the detective (English or hardboiled) in a fantasy world is that this individual, confronting the inherent weaknesses in two legal systems, may choose one over the other, abandon both, or try to create a coherent theory that would neatly combine both approaches into a Grand Unified Magical Theory.
Regardless of their choice, their decision will say something about the largely arbitrary and likely inequitable systems governing disparate, differently privileged communities. I’ve only read Storm Front, the first book in the series, and don’t intend to read more. But I do think that here, with the mix of fantasy and mystery, Butcher highlights the exciting conceptual possibilities open to writers looking to blend genres. It’s a bit like the Large Hadron Collider: we smash things together really fast and study the wreckage to better understand the universe.
