The Creed of a Sleuthing Philosopher

Being an enthusiastic reader of historical crime fiction, I find that more and more of the novels I pick up feature appearances by real-life figures out of the past, whether those folks are taking cameo turns or playing larger roles in the drama. From my list of favorite crime novels of 2006, half were books prominent for their inclusion of genuine characters: Critique of Criminal Reason, by Michael Gregorio; The Interpretation of Murder, by Jeb Rubenfeld; The One from the Other, by Philip Kerr; The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard; and Red Sky Lament, by Edward Wright. And on my nightstand can be found three more novels in which historical personages take some part: David Dickinson’s Death on the Nevskii Prospekt, William Landlay’s The Strangler, and an April release, Black Hats, written by Patrick Culhane (aka Max Allan Collins) and starring ex-Old West lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.

Some readers don’t like the intrusion of genuine characters into their fiction. For instance, I had an argument recently with a fellow member of my book group, who dismissed Elizabeth Gaffney’s 19th-century New York City novel, Metropolis (2005), in general, because she couldn’t get past her dislike of the fact that this story of luck, love, and power politics at all levels of society featured a variety of genuine players. I, however, find it thrilling when a modern author manages to capture the character of a real-life historical figure in his or her stories, without being thoroughly inhibited by the demands of “accurate representation.” (This, after all, is fiction we’re talking about here, not simply reporting.) And I frequently find myself thinking that this or that actual personage from long ago would make a dandy player in a 21st-century mystery.

Guardian books critic Ned Beauman has his own ideas about that last prospect, which he spelled out in a recent column:

Although the insertion of real historical figures into novels like E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime is often thought of as a uniquely postmodern trick, we find Johnson and Boswell picking up the magnifying glass in a story by Lillian de la Torre as long ago as 1943.

That was a promising start, but, since then, when mystery writers have looked for a real historical figure to add gravitas to their novels, they’ve usually gone for the very mighty, from Julius Caesar in Steven Saylor’s Rubicon to John F. Kennedy in James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. This makes sense--a lot of murders are about power--but what’s much more interesting is the clash between the brutal, messy world and someone who lives mostly in their own gentle, ordered mind, like a philosopher or a novelist.

The supreme example of this is probably an out-of-print, 1978 novel called The Case of the Philosopher’s Ring by Randall Collins, in which Bertrand Russell despatches Sherlock Holmes to find out who has stolen Wittgenstein’s mind. In the same year, Margaret Doody published Aristotle Detective. But writers tend to be more popular than philosophers, perhaps because philosophers don’t get out much ... So instead we’ve had murders solved by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark Twain, Poe again, and even, of all people, Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter.

I’ve always thought [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau was a natural choice for this kind of book. After writing some unpopular anti-religious tracts in 1762, the philosopher found himself in exile for several years, first in Motiers in Switzerland and then in Wootton in Staffordshire. Both these little towns, like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, could have seen regular poisonings and stabbings, and Rousseau, with his insight into human wickedness, would have been just the man to unravel them. But which great thinker could you see as the next Sherlock Holmes?

Read all of Beauman’s short piece here.

(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)