Inspired by, I don’t know, Poirot, S. Holmes, Nero Wolfe – in which stories the man in the street has quite frequently heard/read about the famed investigator.
Are there any famous private investigators – in this sense?
I guess a more fundamental question is – are there any substantial number of people making a living (famous or not) as “detectives” in the novelistic sense?
I realize the private investigator profession is far from fictitious – I’ve come across any number of PIs in connection with investigating employee malfeasance or embezzlement, surveilling allegedly-injured benefit claimants (who are inevitably filmed juggling dumbbells or the like), conducting background checks, etc. But for the most part, these sort of investigations (while quite useful and requiring good investigative skills) are not the stuff of detective romance – I guess the closest I’ve seen “real life” PIs get to a novel-type investigation is a story about some investigators proving that jewelry taken from an auction house was stolen by the company’s employees. Oh, and I guess in the OJ Simpson or JonBenet cases there were investigators out checking into the backgrounds of various possible “real killers” (though I’d guess most background checking these days involves electronic databases rather than gumshoe work in the field?).
But is there anyone out there making a living a la Nero Wolfe by solving murders and kidnappings and other “big” cases?
I can think of one good example of a famous private detective from the 19th century: Alan Pinkerton. He’s probably as famous as many fictional private eyes.
My ex-neighbor was a PI, and seemed to make a pretty good living at it. He wasn’t running around solving murders and kindappings and the like (I know I’d go to the police if I needed a murder solved, but to each his own), but he would deal with cheating spouse kind of things. That said, I seem to recall his saying that the bulk of his work was going after people who had stopped/never started paying child support (deadbeat dads/moms) and that most of those could be handled by calling up, sounding like a large, serious man rather than a small, freaked out woman, and saying “Hey jackhole, hows about you start paying!”
He has since moved to Las Vegas to ply his trade in the City of Sin
The only one I can think of from the recent era would be J.J. Armes, although I don’t know how much of his fame is deserved, and how much was the product of A) having mechanical arms, B) Being hired to attempt to find Patty Hearst, and C) Self promotion.
Here are books by and about real detectives. Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye is a great read, one of the cases in it was used as the plot for True Believer with James Woods.
Or by promoting himself – the article is great stuff, in a stomach-turning way.
After reading that (and some of the links in the thread ref’d by HeyHomie, for which thks. and mild embarrassment that I missed it), I’m coming to the conclusion that the unviability of making a living as a novelistic-style PI (i.e., the problems with getting engaged for and solving glamorous, high profile cases that the cops can’t) is probably matched by another unrealistic feature of the famous PI, namely the nature of his fame. Some of the Monte types are perhaps renowned to some extent, but only through their own tireless efforts and posturing (and still, they’re hardly household names). The second half of the literary conceit in a lot of the great series is that the guy’s not only famous and wealthy, he’s an eccentric recluse (or talented amateur) who picks and chooses only those high-value cases that tickle his curiosity. Eccentric Monte and his ilk may be; reclusive and retiring, hardly.
Los Angeles private detective Fred Otash (1922-1992) made a name for himself as PI to the stars in the 1950s and '60s. He wrote a book about some of his cases and the shabby tactics he used. He appears in James Ellroy’s novel The Cold Six Thousand.
Yeah, old Fay doesn’t do much to mitigate my thoughts about the reluctantly famous detective (what with her posed trenchcoat shots). Better yet, to judge from her website, she’s taken the logical progression from being a “famous” "“detective” "to being nothing but a full-time media celebrity – apparently she’s quit doing any investigations at this point, and now flogs herself out only for appearances, speaking, consulting, etc.
