A while back, we were discussing The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers here on the dope. I won’t rehearse the discussion – because, frankly, I don’t remember the details and I’m too lazy to look it up – but the discussion brought to my mind an oddity about the book: by the end of it, when Peter Wimsey has solved the central murder, he wishes he’d never gotten involved; not because of what he’s had to go through to solve his case, but because he thinks the murderer was, for the most part, in the right. Can anybody else think of mysteries in which this happens–in which the detective decides he or she was on the wrong side in serving his client.
The first one that comes to mind for me is Robert B. Parker’s Mortal Stakes. Spenser, of course, is often apt to tell a client to go screw himself if he decides he doesn’t like him; but in this case he quite deliberately screws his client…
Spenser is hired to find out of the Boston Red Sox’s star pitcher, Marty Rabb, is shaving points or throwing games. In his investigation he finds that Rabb’s wife, Linda, is an ex-hooker who starred in a single porn movie, and Marty is being blackmailed to prevent her public humiliation, and the guilt is killing him. Spenser ends up having to kill two of the blackmailers, but to prevent Marty’s career from being ruined, he never reveals the truth to his employer and basically throws away his fee.
“Detective Story” from the Animatrix, where The detective is hired by the Agents to track down Trinity for them. He realizes just after he’s found her that she’s a good guy and that he has just led the bad guys straight to her, and during a shootout on a train (with a snubnosed revolver no less ), buys her the time she needs to jump out the window and escape.
A few Agatha Christie titles–most notably “Murder on the Orient Express” where Poirot decides the victim had it coming and opts to not pursue the (several) murderers.
An episode of Moonlighting in which they were looking for Cinderella, who was on the lam from the mob.
An episode of Veronica Mars in which she was hired to find somebody who was on the lam from the Russion mob.
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,
one of the detectives turns out to be a replicant, which is where they got the line in the movie, “Hey, Deckard, have you ever taken this test?” in the book, he did, and passed; the other one failed…
(Speaking as poster, not moderator): I’m a little confused about what the specific topic is.
For instance, in THE MALTESE FALCON, when Sam Spade realizes that his client is the murderer. He does turn her in. So, is that an example where he’s “on the wrong side”?
There are many many many examples of the bad guy turns out to be the detective’s boss, including several of John LeCarre’s spy novels.
Well, I came in here to mention The Nine Tailors, which I read a few months ago. And then I tried to think of another one along those lines, because I know there’s plenty of them, but I can’t right at this very moment.
Speaking as OP, I was really looking for instances in which the detective decides that the situation was better off without his involvement, not where the bad guy was the client. In the two examples I gave in my OP, for instance, Wimsey and Spenser were hired by people completely on the up and up; but by the time they had completed their assignments, they felt more sympathy for the original “bad guy” than they did for their clients (and in Spenser’s case, actively worked to protect the bad guy.)
In Chance, he works against Julius Ventura’s interests after he finds Anthony Meeker. In Playmates, he ignores the point shaving by Dwayne Woodcock, even though that’s what he was hired to find. In Potshot, he REALLY screws over his client after discovering she was a player in the land deal. In Hugger Mugger, he kinda-sorta goes against his client’s wishes (assuming his client was the stables rather than Clive).
The “victim” is a violent and abusive man. The suspect kills the victim when he witness the man beating his wife (whom the suspect is in love with), rushes in to defend her and winds up killing the husband in the subsequent fight. Holmes determines that he is a good and upright person, holds a kangaroo court in his study with Holmes as the judge, Watson as the jury. Watson acquits him and Holmes lets him go.
I was gonna say, before reading critter42’s response: aren’t there some Sherlock Holmes stories where, after solving the mystery, good old Sherl decides to quietly let the matter slide rather than turning the criminal in?
I had forgotten Holmes. I think that, by the end of the Irene Adler affair, he decided she was much more honorable than the prince who was employing him and insulted the client to his face.
The Conversation, has a double twist on the theme.
Gene Hackman is hired by a big corporation to bug a couple walking in the park. After hearing their conversation, he sympathizes with them, and tries to protect them from the danger they are in from the corporation. As the twist, he discovers the two were actual plotting to murder the head of the corporation – and succeed due to his unknowing assitance.
As I recall it, Spenser and Hawk finds Anthony Meeker, but when Julius’ daughter Shirley gets murdered by a third party in the course of the investigation, Julius pays the duo for their time, since they decline to murder Meeker for him. But at the end of the book, once he and Hawk and caught the actual murderer, Spenser decides that Anthony is morally complicit in Shirley’s rape and murder, though not legally, and tells Julius where to find Anthony. Susan thought it was quite cold of him.
In addition to “Abbey Grange”, there are “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”.
In “Boscombe Valley” the killer is already dying, and Holmes agrees to let his secret die with him. In “Milverton” Holmes and Watson actually witness the murder, while burgling the victim’s house. In both stories, the victims were blackmailing their killers and were extremely unpleasant people.
There are also Holmes stories where the matter slides because it turns out no prosecutable crime was committed. One of these, which turns out to involve an extremely mean trick instead of a crime, ends with the suspect running off after Holmes threatens him with a whip.
Not exactly a dismissal of the client, although the effect was against the client’s interests. Ellery Queen.
[spoiler]At the end of The Murderer Is A Fox, Ellery finds that the solution he gave to the case, one that led to a huge amount of media attention and acclaim, is wrong. Not only that but it was responsible for the suicide of an innocent.
He is shattered by the realization and only the threat of a serial killer (one of the first true serial killers in mysteries) brings him into the case in his next book, 1949’s Cat of Many Tails. And again, Ellery finds that the solution he gave to the case, one that led to a huge amount of media attention and acclaim, is wrong. Not only that but it was responsible for the suicide of an innocent.
I don’t know of any parallel in all of the mystery literature. A psychiatrist figure finally gets him to realize that he is not god, despite his god complex, and the series goes on. But in most ways, there was never another serious Queen book after that, just explorations of ways to turn the classic mystery novel into something more and when that failed, into stunts.
Holmes takes somewhat the same approach in that holiday-season classic, “The Blue Carbuncle,” when he lets the actual thief go after deciding the thief is a nebbish who will “sin no more,” and that the case against the accused thief will surely collapse when it comes to trial.
), buys her the time she needs to jump out the window and escape.