Sometimes, the fictional detective takes up more space than the case. If it’s a man, they juggle addictions and fast women with a maverick nose for clues; if it’s a woman, they battle parenting or loneliness and a workplace full of unchivalrous men. Then there’s the detective who steps back, frames the action and lets you watch slices of life drift by. At News Hour, this is our preferred type. The Spirit is a great example, at least in graphic novel form – the noirish stories of the nasty and the unlucky on New York’s seamier side. Even when he has a love interest, the Spirit himself is elusive, almost passive – he floats through these lives doing what he can, viewing them with blend of fatalism and melancholic hope. Read the book, avoid the film (they poured it through a Sin City strainer and it came out bad).
On American radio in the 1940s, the book-adapted tales of The Amazing Mr Malone managed the same feat. John Saul was one of many who played Malone, the lawyer ‘whose practice before every type of bar has become a legend’ (one presumes this doesn’t include ballet), and who provided a window onto unfortunate New York life stories shaped by a cliché. One week it might be ‘lucky in cards, unlucky in love’, then ‘a strong offense is the best defense’ and so on. Malone was good, damn good – but there was no maverick posturing, just an eye for bad character and a keen hand on the rudder of justice.
If he sounds like your thing, find The Amazing Mr Malone on iTunes under Old Time Radio Mysteries (the adverts at the start last about two-and-a-half minutes, if you’d like to get straight in), or go here. The stories were based on the work of the prolific, often forgotten and faintly surrealistic novelist Craig Rice (otherwise known as Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, and pictured above).
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 