Credit: From the site TVtropes.org
“The rain was comin’ down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time. When you’re in a situation like mine, you can only think in metaphors.” — Dick Justice, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
By PJ Parrish
Maybe I’m just hanging around the wrong people these days.
I’ve been lucky to have some free time this month so am reading for pleasure. But have started and put aside four books. It didn’t dawn on me until this week why: The protagonists are all hot messes. Maybe it’s because I see enough losers in real life that my patience with fictional ones has snapped its last thread. Coupled with the fact that every character on TV seems damaged, deranged or just too ditzy to live.
Now, we all love a flawed protagonist. Their personal journey is a parallel track that runs along side the main murder plot and creates interest and empathy. But man, does everyone have to be addicted, divorced, friendless, childless, and beset with demons from their screwed up childhoods? Do we really need another detective whose only steady relationships are with Cutty Sark and John Coltrane?
I really wish I could name names here because I hit some passages that are really worth quoting to make my point. And none of these books are old noir. Each is of recent vintage and a couple are big-name writers.
This all dovetailed with a recent Facebook post by my writer-friend and Shamus winner Rick Helms. He’s on a cruise with lots of time to read, but he, like me, has lost patience. To quote:
[I’m] relaxing with a generally well-written private eye novel by a writer new to me. Like many PI novels these days the protagonist is almost painfully damaged. Whether it’s alcohol, drugs, gambling, or just plain paralyzing depression or grief, a large segment of the mystery writing community frequently writes broken protags. Some of these characters have been very critically successful. I have sort of a different take. I tend to regard emotionally damaged protags as a bit of a crutch.
Sure, I’ve written them…[my PI] Pat Gallegher is a gambling addict dragging half a century of failure behind him like a Dickens ghost. My small town police chief Judd Wheeler has PTSD and panic attacks. My forensic psychologist Ben Long presents with a dramatically exaggerated version of my own high-functioning autism. In each case, however, they are coping adequately with their difficulties. While they may experience distress, they don’t wallow in it. None of them wakes up hung over to a living room strewn with pizza boxes and beer bottles and days of dishes piled in the sink (the universal literary language for desperation and giving up). They are managing well despite their problems. Their personal tragedies impact their lives, but they aren’t the story itself.
Rick goes on to say he’s old enough to remember reading the lastest new releases by Ross Macdonald and his own work is influenced by Chandler, Robert B. Parker, Brett Halliday, and the like. He, like me, has a special love of Macdonald. To quote:
Lew Archer TOLD the stories of his investigations. He never WAS the story. The pathos and distress in his stories were always portrayed by the people he interviewed in the course of his investigations. He regards a murder victim or an oil spill in Santa Barbara with the same dispassionate observations as he might describe a businessman’s special baseball game. Archer is an observer of tragedy, seldom reacting to it with more than average empathy. He cares, but he doesn’t lose himself in his investigation. In the end, he walks away with little observable growth or change in his basic character, because he was never broken in the first place. The story was never about him. It was about solving the case.
He also cites Parker’s Spenser as a relatively mentally healthy and confident guy doing a tough job while maintaining a long-term relationship. He cares about people, but — with the possible exception of when Ruger nearly killed him in Small Vices — he rarely allows his own personal condition to do much more than put a hitch in his giddy-up.
Likewise, as Rick points out, “We know little of Phillip Marlowe’s inner emotions and mental functioning. We know his opinions, because Chandler was full of them, mostly of the sardonic variety. But nobody would refer to Marlowe as damaged.”
When did the shift to a protag’s personal journey begin? I’m not well-read in the old stuff to even guess. But I do know I’m weary of the dreary dick. Is it time to call them out as the tired cliches they are?
Okay, we have to stop and back up. Time for definitions. I love definitions. They bring clarity to fuzzy topics like this. Is a cliche the same thing as a trope? Or is the latter just an uppity word for the former? Lemme give it a go:
Cliche: Using certain phrases, expressions, devices, or archetypes that have been used so much they lose freshness. Maybe they were once intriguing, but when readers see something too often, they become desensitized, and the idea no longer carries the currency it once had. Examples: the naive female rookie patronized by boss and colleagues. (Tyne Daly, playing clean Kate to Eastwood’s dirty Harry?) The slimy defense lawyer. The good-cop-bad-cop. The crabby lieutenant who suspends a rogue underling. The PI who gets the crap beat out of him but jumps out of bed the next morning all dishy and doodle. Add your own to the list…
Trope: A familiar character type, plot point, setting, or writing style that has become instantly recognizable to readers. Very common in genre novels and when done well, every effective. Examples: In the romance, “enemies to lovers” trope (lifted from Jane Austen). The lone gunslinger and embattled sheriff. (Come back, Shane!)
Most folks conflate cliches and tropes but they are distinctly different. Tropes can be good things, helping a character to come across as an old friend or making classic situations feel fresh again (think Romeo and Juliet transformed into West Side Story.)
Time for some Joseph Campbell here. In his The Hero With a Thousand Faces, he drew upon works by psychoanalyst Carl Jung to develop recognizable literary archetypes. According to Campbell, everyone from Homer’s Odysseus to Neo in The Matrix is living out the same epic story. George Lucas credits Campbell for the Star Wars trilogy, using the King Authur trope to create boy-king Luke Skywalker, who gets a magic sword, is guided by an old mentor, and storms a castle to save a princess.
One of my favorite tropes is Austen’s Mr. Darcy. He’s handsome, mysterious, sexy. I loved how Helen Fielding used him in Bridget Jones’s Diary: “It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head against a tree.”
Let’s face it, crime fiction is at its heart tropian. We rely on situations (crimes, usually murder), archetypes (loner cop holding out for justice) and even some “rules,” which of course can be broken.
But how do you honor the great traditions of our genre without being banal? How do you cleave to such a well-worn path and still give your readers some new vistas? How do you utilize trope and not slide downhill into cliche?
Our dilemma is that a story has to feel new and yet be familiar enough to be recognized as part of the genre. Writers often want to pay homage to their favorites from the past, but characters have to distinguish themselves in their own present or they petify into stereotypes. In the early books, Spenser seemed a Marlowe knockoff, but Parker quickly made him into his own man.
Years ago, I got into a lengthy blog discussion on this subject with a bunch of crime writers. Luckily, I kept this quote from Brian Lindenmuth: “the PI novel is the haiku of the mystery genre; there may be only 17 syllables but in the right hands those syllables will sing. There is the potential for a lot of power in that framework.”
I liken crime writing to classical ballet. There are only five positions for the feet and arms in ballet. But within that strict framework, anything is possible, from swoony-romanticism of Swan Lake to George Balanchine’s Stravinsky-twitchy Agon.
The trick, if it can be simplified as such, is that you have to take our beloved tropes and turn them into your own, like Fielding did with Emma and Bridget Jones. A while back, I contributed a short story to an anthology whose theme was honoring the PI tradition. Being on a John D. McDonald binge back then, I decided to create a female McGee whose business card read: Mavis Magritte, Salvage Consultant, Slip C12, Duncan Clinch Marina, Traverse City, Michigan. I had a ball writing that thing. Mavis has to prove her best friend Eunice Meijer didn’t kill her creepy lover Dirk. And yes, they drink gin.
Trope on, crime dogs. In the meantime, take some inspiration from the pas de deux from Balanchine’s Agon.
Fun and insightful post, PJ. Thanks for saving me from the jaws of over-used tropes. Excellent advice to focus on the mystery, not the protagonist’s flaws, while instilling a fresh perspective.
What can I say Grant, except…
We’re gonna need a bigger trope.
In romance author Suzanne Brockmann’s promotional materials for her books, she lists all the tropes she’s used in the book. Romance readers know what kind of stories they want to read.
In my current WIP, I’m using a romance trope–one I don’t like, but readers do. We’ll see how that goes.
(Watched the last clip. All I can say is “ouch” — I don’t bend that way!)
Interesting, that Suzanne supplies all the clues so readers can choose according to taste. A bit too spot-on for me. Doesn’t this take some of the fun of discovery out of reading?
As for Agon, it has always been one of my favorites. Created in 1957! First time I saw it performed live, I was stunned. Which is what Balanchine wanted. The word “agon” means contest or struggle in Greek, but Balanchine didn’t really intend it as such. It is plotless. He called it “a machine, but a machine that thinks.”
To me tropes and cliches are the same thing–the only difference is that tropes are cliches used effectively in a way that draws the reader in and cliches make a reader groan and move on to something else — which I think is what you were getting to in your post today.
Obviously we all like some degree of cliche as we have favorite genres. How many people are going to read romances if the guy doesn’t get the girl? Who wants to read a western where the hero doesn’t win? So I can see how it might be difficult as a writer to recognize when your cliche use has lost effectiveness even when it’s details and not story outcomes per se.
Yes, that was what I was trying to get do with this. (I struggled writing it because the trope and cliche are such slippery siblings.) Maybe it comes down to what you suggest, that cliches turn us off while tropes give us comfort that we are at least entering a familiary “country.”
You nailed it. I see many Chandler knock offs. I have tried to move away from drunk, divorced, almost thrown off the force, cops. But there are plenty of them. Some show up in the First Page Critiques here.
It is certainly possible to write into one of these tropes or cliche’s. It is just hard to do well. That may be a part of the issue as well.
I know your list was not all inclusive but there is one detective trope I have read my last. The gazillionare PI. Enough of Joe Crimesolver jumping into his G5 to wing to Miami to pick up his Ferrari and chase the bad guy.
Whelp, you can blame it on Bruce Wayne, I guess. He was a pretty good detective for a rich guy.
Terrific post, Kris. I love twisting tropes, or going in a different direction than you’d expect. One of the panels I attended at Left Coast Crime in Seattle this past weekend was on where the cozy mystery genre was headed. The panelists discussed twisting tropes and pushing boundaries, going edger or softer at either end of the sub-genre spectrum.
Cathy Ace mentioned her WISE Enquiries cozy series, which features four female P.I.s who formed their own agency. That might be a trope too far for some, but I was intrigued by the idea of a cozy P.I. series with the goal to help others solve their problems.
I woke up one morning back in the late 1990s to a Ford Explorer idling outside my house for the longest time. There was a guy inside starring intently down the street. I finally went outside to ask him what was up and he told me to buzz off, with the same manner as an annoyed library patron. So, I called the police non-emergency number and spoke with a nice detective who said they would check it out. A short while later a deputy showed up to speak with the man, who then drove off down the block. The deputy told me that the man was a P.I. surveilling a case of possible marital infidelity, and thanked me for being a concerned citizen.
I felt a bit bad, but if annoyed P.I. had just said he was working a case, I’d have left him alone. I smelled no booze, only brusque irritation. Now that’s dialing back the trope in real life 🙂
Ha! Real life meets fictional tropes. Did he really say “buzz off” or something spicier? 🙂
Interesting, too, about that LCC panel on the romance tropes. May be my imaginations, but genre fiction seems to be searching for a renaissance of some kind. We talked here last week about how so many of the Edgar nominees this year seem to be going for more of a literary tone. Everything old is new again.
Now THAT’S interesting to hear, that certain writers are gravitating (back) towards literary?
Exciting news to me, a fantasy writer with a literary style that I just can’t seem to shake.
I know every reader has their own preferences, but it’s pleasing to hear that there might be readership encouraging such a shift away from the “journaling” style that’s overtaken certain genres like a garden weed.
It’s fair to say that it was something spicier 🙂
But how do you honor the great traditions of our genre without being banal?
Voice. Marlowe. McGee. Hammer. And blood. I like blood pumping through my PIs. That’s why I never got into Archer. He’s the opposite of Hammer. McGee paused every now and then to give an opinion, and didn’t care who knew it. Marlowe let his contempt come off his tongue. Voice and blood.
Yes, re Archer. He could be too detached at times. But his plots and characters were so rich in psychology, esp among family members. That is always what got to me about the books. Plus, he could sling the social commentary when he wanted to. I always loved this line from one of his books (forget which one) because I have a visceral hate of LA: “There’s nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.”
McGee. A long-time love of the books. I have learned so much from how JDM SHOWS a man thinking.
And changing.
I was watching a new-to-me TV series and quit after a couple of episodes because the PI seemed to have been created by a committee. Divorced, problems with his previous job on the force, etc. Seems like lazy writing or even AI-generated stories.
I love your analogy with ballet. Reminds me of something my husband wrote about chess many years ago. There are six types of chess pieces (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, and Pawn). The board is always set up the same way at the beginning of the game. The rules are specific, but the number of possible chess games is more than the number of stars in the universe.
Also loved the video of Agon. Maybe it’s time for a ballerina who moonlights as an amateur detective!
Not a chess player but love the analogy. Re TV shows: Was talking to my sister Kelly about this post and she, who watches EVERY cop show and crime reality show, said something similar as you. She is tired of the cliched cops and is really sick of the ones whose screwed up personal lives impact the ability of their teams to do their work. It’s become a common TV trope.
I never have liked reading about screwed up people unless they reform. I love redemption stories.
I read to escape trouble, not to invite it.
Maybe the things I like are coming back into fashion.
Redemption is a powerful theme in crime fiction. I don’t mind a troubled protag. As long as they show some growth. Our own series hero, Louis Kincaid, is a biracial man fostered out to a white family after his mother died from alcoholism. (Baggage much?) Around book 3, we decided he was drinking too much and it was a cliche. So he dried out. And his “issues” are never at the forefront of our plots. But over the series, before we retired it, Louis grew in many important ways. Even an atheist can come to believe in something.
I’m with you, Cynthia.
I like my hero to be human, which, of course means flawed. But, there aren’t too many real humans who suffer all the flaws in the universe, like MCs in some novels.
And I always, always want to recognize white hats from black hats; and the white hats must win.
One of the things I liked about writing romance is that the characters are competent in their lives. All they need is that special someone, and they have to figure out how to be worthy of them.
Cliches and tropes aren’t evil. It’s being lazy when you use them that’s evil. In a strong story with interesting characters, the reader will fly right past those moments because they are intrinsic to the story.
Definitely time to retire the defective detective, Kris. I’ve read too many not very interesting variations on that theme.
I avoid stories with the protag having heavy baggage. I do that because the characters are simply not believable to me. How can your personal life be so screwed up and yet you’re a brilliant detective? Nope. Also, there’s pretty awful news all day long and I don’t want to read about it in fiction.
I completely stopped reading any detective fiction presented as “gritty” or “realistic” or “noir” because this Everydetective protagonist became unendurable. The moment a detective takes a drink, I’m tossing the novel. The moment he refers to his divorced wife or his estranged daughter, I’m done. He wakes up alone and depressed in a grungy apartment? I’m never touching anything by that author again, ever.
I’ve been completely over this type of protagonist for at least ten years, maybe twenty.