The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks (Crime Files)

This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role―either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives. Praise for The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction Contents Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: Step Forward, Sidekicks Reference Lists 2 ‘One Fixed Point in a Changing Age’: Reframing the Sidekick Introduction: The Sidekick and the Detective Story Upon Closer Inspection: Detailing the Sidekicks The Narrator Dr. John H. Watson Conclusion: A Long and Patient Study References 3 ‘Passed by Unnoticed’: Surveillance and the Street Urchin in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone Introduction Gooseberry’s Covert Urban Surveillance Boy Labour and the Origins of the Street Urchin as Sidekick Colonial Doubles Conclusion Reference Lists 4 ‘...Always with the Inspector’: The Reader as Sidekick in Mid-Victorian ‘Detective Literature’, 1845–1887 Introduction: The Mid-Victorian ‘Gap’ The Journalist as Sidekick Police Memoirs and Reader Sidekicks Reader Sidekicks and Sensation Fiction Conclusions: The End of the Reader-Sidekick Reference Lists 5 ‘You Have a Grand Gift of Silence, Watson’: Reinventing Agency in Twenty-First-Century Adaptations of Dr. Watson Introduction Sherlock Holmes and His ‘Boswell’ The Sidekick’s Evolution to Partner Encouraging and Managing Sobriety Nurturing EQ Development IQ Development in Joan Watson and Jamie Watson Conclusion References 6 ‘A Look of Doglike Devotion’: Hercule Poirot’s Stooges and Foils Introduction Arthur Hastings, OBE The Siblings Shepherd Mrs. Ariadne Oliver Inspector Edward Catchpool Conclusion References 7 Finding the Female Sidekick in the Lord Peter Wimsey Novels Introduction Alexandra Katherine Climpson 1 The Spinster Detective Detective or Sidekick? Harriet Vane Love Interest: Strong Poison (1930) Sidekick: Have His Carcase (1932) ‘Admission of Equality’ (Sayers [1935] 166): Gaudy Night (1935) and Busman’s Honeymoon (1937) Conclusion Reference Lists 8 ‘Pretty, but Not so Pretty...’: Marlowe’s Female Sidekicks and the Domestication of Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction Introduction Anne Riordan Linda Loring Conclusion References 9 The Anti-Sidekick: Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, Double Consciousness and the Subversion of the Sidekick in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins Mysteries Introduction: Double Trouble Subverting the Sidekick: The Spectre of Mouse ‘Why’d You Kill Him?’: Violence, Duality and the Anti-Sidekick ‘the Ghastly Harbinger of Death’: Return of the Mouse References 10 72 Votes: Theorizing the Scapegoat Sidekick in Batman: A Death in the Family Introduction: 1–900s and Crowbars The ‘Good’ Robin: Dick Grayson and Setting the Standard for a Sidekick On Jason Todd, a.k.a. the ‘Bad’ Robin Violence, Mimetic Crisis, Death and Scapegoating in A Death in the Family Conclusion Reference List 11 ‘I’m Gonna Be the Best Friend You Could Ever Hope For—And the Worst Enemy You Could Ever Imagine’: Frank Miller’s All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder and the Problem of the Boy Sidekick in the Twenty-First-Century Superhero Narrative Introduction: Robin in Crisis In Pursuit of a Boy Sidekick: The Troubling Acquisition of Dick Grayson The Boy-Sidekick-in-Training: The Batman/Robin Power Imbalance The Boy Sidekick Emerges: The Corruption of Robin Why So Serious? New Century: New Sidekick References 12 ‘World’s Long on Academics, Morse, but Woeful Short of Good Detectives’: Lewis, Hathaway, and Endeavour; the Changing Roles of Colin Dexter’s Sidekicks Introduction Morse and Lewis in Print Morse and Lewis on Screen Lewis and Hathaway on Screen Endeavour: A New Paradigm Conclusion Reference List 13 Mooncakes and Squashed Fly Biscuits: Otherness in the Wells and Wong Series Introduction Hazel as Other Hazel’s Parallel Identities Daisy as Other Otherness in Hong Kong References 14 Sherlock’s Legacy: The Case of the Extraordinary Sidekick Introduction What Makes for an Extraordinary Sidekick? Put to Good Use: Plugging the Trust Gap Conclusion References Index