Every Day Is Special: detective

Showing posts with label detective. Show all posts

October 18 – Hard-Boiled Guy / Girl Day

Posted October 18, 2020

The name of this special day gave me pause - hard-boiled guy? Hard-boiled girl?

"Hard-boiled" detective fiction is a particular style of crime writing that became popular in books and movies in the 1930s.

You have to look at literary styles in relation to earlier styles. There was a British style of mystery book that - even though it may have been about icky things like murder - downplayed blood and violence. These sorts of books often took place at country manors that had entire staffs of cooks and maids and butlers and that frequently hosted relatives; all those people living in close proximity meant a bunch of suspects with excellent motives for murder!

Apparently this style of mystery was followed elsewhere, including the U.S., even though there were few well-staffed country manors in that country!

My favorite kind of mystery is the
more cerebral, less gritty, very British
style of books. I really love books by
Agatha Christie, especially the ones
with quirky Belgian detective Hercule
Poirot.

These sorts of British mysteries ruled in America - until author Dashiell Hammett. An American who had worked for years for the Pinkerton detective agency, Hammett wrote "grittier" and more realistic stories with more modern settings. More violence, more blood. (So, very much NOT my thing.)

Hammett's new, gritty, violent, realistic detective fiction - which was often set in cities, not on countryside estates - was and still is called hard-boiled fiction.

Hammett's most famous detective was Sam Spade. Spade was tough, hard, able to handle whatever came his way. Although he wasn't the sort of intellectual solver-of-puzzles that fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was, Spade did have a good eye for details and a sharp, practical intelligence.

Spade was the main character in Hammett's most famous book, The Maltese Falcon. Several movie versions of this book have been made - and today is the anniversary of the most famous version, the 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart.

And that's why today is Hard-Boiled Guy / Girl Day!

Also on this date:

Meatloaf Appreciation Day

Anniversary of the freeing of poet Phillis Wheatley (?)

Rock musician Chuck Berry's birthday

Persons Day in Canada

Alaska Day

Podcaster Rebecca Watson's birthday

Tennis star Martina Navratilova's birthday

Skier Lindsey Vonn's birthday

Basketball player Brittney Griner's birthday

Independence Day in Azerbaijan

International Necktie Day

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

November holidays
November birthdays
Historical anniversaries in November

June 23 - Anniversary of a Victory for "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes"

Posted on June 23, 2018

Today is the anniversary of a successful bit of detective work - detective work done by (gasp!) a woman!!!

Let's go back to the year 1917, in New York. In February of that year, an 18-year-old named Ruth Cruger disappeared. The police investigated but came up empty handed. The case was declared a "cold case," even though the Cruger family had money and privilege.

The father of the young woman who had vanished, Henry Cruger, worried that the police hadn't investigated properly. He hired a woman named Mrs. Grace Quackenbos Humiston to look into his daughter's disappearance. Humiston, who was a Special Assistant U.S. States Attorney, had made a name for herself by investigating mistreatment of workers and the awful peonage system.

Humiston did look into the Ruth Cruger case and by June 18 was able to establish that the likely suspect was a man named Alfredo Cocchi, who ran the repair shop where Cruger was last seen. There had already been a quick search of his place, which didn't find any evidence on Cruger's disappearance, and several police officers had vouched for Cocchi's honesty. But Grace Humiston insisted that the police search again, this time while she watched. When they did, they found the body of Cruger.

There was a ton of attention given to Humiston's successful detective work. As a matter of fact, many people began to call Humiston "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes."

Alfred Cocchi had fled to Italy - but he was located and put on trial there on this date in 1917.

As for why the police hadn't found the girl's body, investigation showed that Cocchi had had a "kickback" scheme with the local police - and it was those dirty cops who had vouched for him.