The Detective Story Of Life During The 1920's

The detective novel gained popularity during the 1930s due to its conventional plot and heroic characters that most people enjoyed as an escape from the pains of everyday life. As Americans were living in poverty, they wanted to see a well-off version of themselves, “a working-man hero especially suited to the industrial city.” Detective stories provided that hero. The detective, being pitched “against intractable sources of corruption...tended to convey a populist anger at the abuses of the wealthy and powerful that made it particularly appealing during the Depression.” After all, it was of course that one percent that was holding all of the money from the other ninety-nine in such a time of economic crisis. It should not be interpreted,

Archie sets the scene perfectly against the backdrop of 1930s Manhattan. As he goes on investigation trips through the impoverished slums of uptown, he comments feeling like his car would be destroyed if he left it at the curb, “for the street was littered with rubbish and full of Italian kids yelling and dashing around like black-eyed demons” (11). In terms of national news, Archie reads the news of the real America as well: “miners were striking in Pennsylvania, the NRA was saving the country under three different headings...a gangster had been tear-gassed out of a Brooklyn flat, a Negro had been lynched in Alabama” (21). While these are conveyed as everyday occurrences, as they were during that decade, the troubling nature of the time is accurately conveyed in that facet of their listing. That these things should ever be considered normal alerts the reader immediately to the troubles of the nation. These concerns are only momentary, though, as Wolfe does not hesitate to comment on the ingenuity of the modern man, for “formerly [a sedentary man] could satisfy any amount of curiosity regarding bygone times by sitting down with Gibbon or Ranke...but if he wanted to meet his contemporaries he had to take to the highways, whereas the man of today...had only to turn on the radio and resume his chair” (52). The fact that Wolfe is able to do just that -- solve crimes without leaving his chair -- made him all the more appealing to Stout’s readership, as they could barely find a few dollars without wandering around town for several hours. It is important to note as well Wolfe’s being overweight, suggesting that he is well-fed. The multitudes of people lining the streets waiting for their turn at the soup kitchen would almost certainly relish in the idea of a man who eats three multi-course meals each