I disagree with the assertion that the personal lives of TV detectives are better left unshown or unsaid. Exhibit A is “The Rockford Files”, and Exhibit B is “Magnum P.I.” Granted, both those shows go back a number of years but nowadays all they show are police procedurals, and we only learn about the characters personal lives as they relate to the case, other than the fact that Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS builds boats by hand in his basement.
Personal lives, please!
The show Sherlock is, as Moftiss have said “Not a detective show, but a show about a detective” and I love it.
I’m not a huge mystery reader, but I really liked Faye Kellerman’s Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus stories - as much or more for their insight into the Orthodox community as for the mysteries themselves.
As Ulf above said - some mysteries are meant almost entirely as whodunnits, some as novels that also contain a mystery. I prefer the latter.
I would have to agree with Ulf the Unwashed on all points (it appears that we read the same authors). I also agree with movingfinger about Lt. Leaphorn and Jim Chee. At times, I get a bit exasperated with Chee’s stubborness to go with the woo, but that is part of what makes him an interesting character.
I tend to like a mixed bag in TV mysteries as well. Mostly, I watch shows that are primarily procedural, but give a bit of history and personality to the characters.
I agree. And the succession of Chee’s romances, from Mary Landon to Janet Pete to Bernadette Manuelito, makes sense as part of Chee’s development as a person.
I’m used to detective novels where the protagonist’s personal life is part of the story, whether it’s Leaphorn and Chee, or Marcus Didius Falco, or J.A. Jance’s Joanna Brady, and I enjoy that part of the story. Going back and reading one of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels (I recently re-read The Big Sleep for the first time in >20 years), where the classic hard-boiled detective seemingly has no personal life at all, is very strange to me now.
I’m with you. For TV, I really don’t want to know anything about their lives. And all the SVU detectives could take a page from Munch, whose personal life seems to be limited to throwaway remarks about his exes. (I don’t care about your gambling problem, Rollins. No, I’m not devastated by you burning your daughter’s driver’s license, Stabler. And Amaro, I get it, you’re tortured by being a good dad.) I’m planning to start watching classic L&O from the beginning–relief to hear there will be no personal lives for a while!
I think Archie might tell you that honor goes to Saul Panzer.
Yay = Woohoo!
Yea = Yes
I like just a little. I mean, I want the detectives to be characters with backgrounds and so forth, but I really honestly kind of hate romance in any book at all, so constant whining about relationship/marital problems or sexual tension kind of wrecks it for me. If the background is interesting and relevant, then sure. If it’s more like they’re distracted from the case and just adding drama with a wife who gripes endlessly about how she never sees her detective husband and then he sleeps with his female partner and there’s really no point to it except to add to the emotional turmoil of the main characters or that sort of thing… leave it out.
Basically, if it distracts from the actual story (whiny spouse, mom with Alzheimer’s, junkie brother, child angst) instead of being part of it or enhancing it… then I don’t like it.
I think that’s what I liked about Wexford–often his life with his family would job his thought process in interesting ways and help him to solve the mystery.
I can only offer the cop-out answer “It depends.”
If the author is a talented writer and makes the sleuth an interesting person, I’m always happy to hear all about him. But if the author is, say, a brilliant plot writer who’s not so good with characterization, detours into the author’s personal life are liable to seem boring and distracting.
That’s what I came in to say. I mostly watch CSI out of habit anymore, but I liked it a lot better when every episode wasn’t about the characters’ personal lives. It’s getting even more annoying lately, because even the crimes are related to something in one or more of the characters’ pasts.
I swear, I like DB Russell (much better than “Super Ray,” though not as much as Gil Grissom), but if one more diabolical criminal mastermind killer threatens or kidnaps some member of his family, I give up.
You might find Sarah Caudwell’s Hilary Tamar series of mysteries interesting - as Wikipedia says:
Man, that pretty much described Southland. I don’t think there really was any cop action. Just interpersonal drama. Might as well have been classed as a soap opera that involved police, rather than a cop show with personal angst.
I love those books, they’re hilarious. But while the books are coy about Professor Tamar’s personal life, there is quite a lot about the personal lives of the young London barristers. The attraction for me is not the puzzles, but the characters.
As others have said, it depends on how it’s handled, and particularly how it interacts with the mystery.
A good sleuth character pretty much always has some personality quirks and unusual patterns of thought and behavior. Showing their personal lives can illuminate how their minds work and how they came to be who they are, and that’s often a good thing. Establishing events from their personal lives can also provide opportunities to give the character more depth in the context of the mystery–they may take a case unusually personally because of event X, or be caught off guard by suspect Y’s actions because of a prior relationship.
I don’t like angst for the sake of angst, or a personal life that exists only to cause random problems or turmoil for the detective. I’m not a fan of police/legal procedurals to start with, and I find far too many of them engage in a race to the bottom in search of “grit”.
I don’t think the divide necessarily lies between media, but I’ll agree that TV often has a more limited scope for showing a personal life alongside the main plot. I would expect that to often result in a lower-quality sidestory on TV than in print.
I for one love knowing that Sherlock Holmes was a coke head!
Generally, no, I think. I found it sort of annoying in a “Spenser” series book recently. Maybe it depends on the detective, though. If Sam Spade got weepy over his romantic travails, something would be lost for me. Lord Peter, though, not so much.
Is this because I’m a lesbian?
Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without her personal life being such a big part of it.
Yep. Getting to know the Brownstone and it’s cast of inhabitants and guests is more of a thing with the Nero Wolfe mysteries than the actual whodunit.
Mind you, that’s more the idiosyncrasies, quirks and characteristics than the “private lives”.