Alleyn As A Gentleman Detective
The gentleman detective has long been a staple of British crime fiction, particularly in novels from the Golden Age.
One obvious comparison with Roderick Alleyn is the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey. Alleyn's family background resembles the relationships created by Dorothy Sayers for her fictional Lord Peter Wimsey (born 1890). Like Alleyn, Wimsey has a titled older brother, who however is far more grand—he's a duke. Like Alleyn, Lord Peter's brother is less intelligent and more conventional than his more famous younger sibling. Alleyn's mother, Lady Alleyn, closely resembles in manner the Dowager Duchess of Denver, Wimsey's mother. Both ladies are affable and intelligent, and strongly support (and perhaps prefer) their younger sons. One marked difference between the fictional biographies of Alleyn and Wimsey, who are about the same age, is in their military service during World War I. Alleyn's army service is glossed over and never discussed, whereas Wimsey's distinguished service on the Western Front has mentally scarred him for life.
Like Alleyn, at least two of Agatha Christie's detectives clearly belong in the gentry. Her elderly spinster, Miss Marple, is not from the aristocracy but is quite at home amongst them, while the diminutive Mr. Satterthwaite (in The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930) and Three Act Tragedy (1934)) has a similar background and is wealthy besides. Her most famous detective character, Hercule Poirot, is a foreigner, and is thus outside the English class system (of which Poirot takes advantage).
Two later and widely known gentleman detectives may also be compared to Alleyn. These are Adam Dalgliesh, created by P. D. James, and Inspector Morse, created by Colin Dexter. Like Alleyn, Dalgliesh flourishes in the Metropolitan Police despite being definitely gentry, but is a recluse and a poet. However, Morse works in Oxford and is (or was) upwardly mobile: he apparently won a scholarship to Oxford but subsequently failed. Like Alleyn and Wimsey, Morse served in the British army before joining the police.
Read more about this topic: Roderick Alleyn
Famous quotes containing the words gentleman and/or detective:
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Everybody thinks detectives do nothing but ask questions. But detectives have souls the same as anyone else.... You know, Mrs. Beragon, being a detective is like, well, like making an automobile. You just take all the pieces and put them together one by one. First thing you know you’ve got an automobile. Or a murderer.”
—Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973)