Procedural Happy Valley Characters

Women have different personalities and motivations, and they form relationships with men for many different reasons. Some of these reasons include love, money, and even lust and manipulation. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett is a novel about Sam Spade, who is a huge figure of the hard-boiled detective genre. Sam Spade goes on a quest to find a valuable falcon, solve murders and jump over the obstacle that surround him on a daily basis. The novel is also about the three women who surround Spade during his quest. The names of these women are Iva Archer, Effie Perine, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and they all have different roles in Sam Spade’s life. In The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Brigid O’Shaughnessy plays the role of femme fatale, Iva Archer plays the role of Spade’s unfortunate future, and Effie Perine plays the role of Spade’s right-hand woman.

In Black Widow’s Wardrobe, Gloria Damasco as a Chicana detective transgresses into a traditional masculine profession proving that women are capable to do an equal or better job than men. Historically most protagonists of the detective novels have been male, while female characters are portrayed ether as hysterical or as the damsel in

Female police officers have appeared on television shows since the 1970s with shows like “Policewomen” and “Get Christie Love”. “Policewomen” paved the way for shows like “Honey West”, “NYPD Blue”, “CSI” and many more. As time went by more and more TV shows include female police officers as part of the main cast, shows like “Law and Order: Special Units Victims”, “Charles’s Angels”, “Hawaii 5-0”, etc. Policewomen on TV shows are not portrayed realistically but it is starting to change. In the earlier days, shows like “Charlie’s Angels” had detectives wear tight dress, glamorous body’s, makeup on, etc.

The thing that stands out to me in The Laughing Policeman is that the women seem to be portrayed as nymphomaniacs. A nymphomaniac is a woman who has an abnormal excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire. A good example of a nymphomaniac in The Laughing Policeman would be Teresa Camarão. Although this book is about a mass murder on a bus, they have to solve the Teresa Camarão case.

Hard-boiled detective fiction sets the scene for a cold and harsh reality. Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Girl with The Silver Eyes” is no exception to this rule. In this short story Hammett paints a picture of a brutally realistic urban center filled with characters that not many people would want to call friends. The realistic qualities of Hammett’s story are drawn from his own life’s experience working as a Pinkerton detective. The detective in “The Girl With The Silver Eyes” works for the Continental Detective Agency and is, therefore, known simply as the Continental Op. In the beginning of the story the Op professes, “a detective, if he is wise, takes pains to make and keep as many friends as possible among transfer company, express

Females in recent fictional crime shows have been merely token representations of women. While the number of women law enforcement agents are increasing, they are still shown as the ‘token’ woman character who maintains the traditional female characteristics of being nurturing

As there is no end to crime (and the mystery that surrounds each case), super sleuth Sammi Evans is sure to handle a whole new case. She will also confront the mysterious and the threatening while she embarks on a suspense-full adventure that follows with every case. Her creator, Jeanne L. Drouillard, brings her and her detective-husband, Dave Patterson, in Thoughts Can Be Deadly (Infinity Publishing, 2010).

Hanne Wilhelmsen is a Scandinavian detective who is good at her job, and suffers more from a shoestring budget inside the police force more than any existential problems. She is involved in a committed relationship with another woman, but does not advertise this to the people that she works with. There is a male friend that she has who is a public prosecutor, he kind of acts as a Dr. Watson to her Holmes. She is arrogant, and also rather attractive. Besides being a cop, Wilhelmsen has worked as a lawyer, news anchor, and a journalist.

As is the case with many of the original novel, “Three Women” and literally translates roughly scenario in John Huston’s film 1941. Amendments and screen three of the Maltese Falcon, Houston’s version captures the best of both of these women in the flesh cinematic. Pour through a seasoned and strong performance in later, and the film fleshes of three very different (yet familiar) examples of females: in companion, and “Spider”, and conniving bitch. Interactions spade with three women that are intertwined with his own, Effie, Eva, and Wonderly life (soon to be revealed as Brigid O'Shaughnessy) reveal a lot about his character, as well as shed light on how refuses Spade über between the masculine and the very concept of femininity, even

The hardboiled-detective genre shares almost the same characters and crime setting. This type of genre typically has a protagonist, whom seems to always be the detective himself. Despite dealing with the legal system and daily crime, it isn’t uncommon for them to get wrapped up in a romantic and sexual relationship with the commonly seen, femme fatale. The detectives in the film Maltese Falcon and Chinatown have similar attitudes, they fall in love with the femme fatale, and end up being a hero in some way.

No matter what characters women play, writers often find a way to integrate female sex appeal into their qualities . This is prominent in detective fiction, especially with the concept of the femme fatale. Susan Hayward in “Film Noir,” describes the femme fatale as being “active, intelligent, powerful, dominant and in charge of her own sexuality” (Hayward 151). In the Maltese Falcon and the BBC adaptation “A Scandal in Belgravia,” two female characters, the femme fatales, are unnecessarily sexualized throughout both stories. Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Irene Adler are portrayed as being manipulative tricksters. The writers give these women two choices, to use their sexuality or have their sexuality be used. Throughout the Maltese Falcon, Brigid is defined by her sexuality and the effect it has on Sam Spade while in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Irene uses her sexuality to define herself and affect Sherlock in the story. For these women, in order for them to be seen as powerful, intelligent, and even

While American and British authors developed the two distinct schools of detective fiction, known as “hard-boiled and “golden age,” simultaneously, the British works served to continue traditions established by earlier authors while American works formed their own distinct identity. Though a niche category, detective works reflect the morality and culture of the societies their authors lived in. Written in the time period after World War I, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and “The Gutting of Couffignal”, and Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble Is My Business” adapt their detectives to a new harsh reality of urban life. In “hard-boiled” works, the detective is more realistic than the detective in “golden age” works according to the

Detective stories are the type of genre that tends to go way over one’s head. In the sense that we are unfamiliar with dark,mysterious, and uncomfortable situations that we generally would have night terrors about. It goes deep into the idea of a world where there is just one brave soul who is willing to uncover the whole truth. There is always a lone detective that the story is revolved around, a man that is ready to sacrifice his safety in order to protect others. Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” and Mosley’s “Devil in a Blue Dress” both bring out the important elements of a detective tale. The lone detective, the setting of a detective story, and the search for truth all come together to constitute as a detective story at its best.

Mulvey suggests that women are passive objects on screen that are meant to be enjoyed and looked at at by the active male. Clarice and Slander can be seen as objects when critiquing it with just Mulveys theory, however when looked at from a post-feminist view it is clear that these women are intelligent in their roles as detectives, and they use their sexuality to help them excel in their careers. Secondly, Gates suggests that females as the center in a detective film become masculinized and if they do not end up in marriage or with love,

The mystery genre of novels has always been fraught with terror, suspense, and the unknown. One category of the mystery genre is reserved for detective novels. Normally those such novels are subject to the public eye under the scrutiny of just how much of it is real or simple superstition and science fiction – just sensational writing. Sensational writing in and of itself is not supposed to be thought provoking to the reader but instead plays off the reader’s baser emotions that center around adrenaline like fear and excitement. Such sensational writing is cheap and reserved for what was considered trashy magazines back in the day, or ‘penny dreadfuls’. Penny dreadfuls to Victorian England is similar to the modern American equivalent of pulp fiction in that there was a no overarching moral but writing for the sake of entertainment, the basis of what sensational writing is reserved for. While A Study in Scarlet is still considered sensational writing, it brought not only fame to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but respectability to detective novels – if those novels had Sherlock Holmes.