Themes
As with his other novels beginning with The Black Marble, Wambaugh spins his tale from numerous points of view, but has as its central character and protagonist a competent, middle aged but dissipated detective sergeant whose age and police experience mirror that of Wambaugh himself, and where he likely would have been had he not resigned from the LAPD.
Wambaugh introduces a new psychological theme in The Secrets of Harry Bright, that of the relationship of fathers and sons, exploring it as a sub-theme to those of burnout and police suicide that characterized his previous novels. He uses as a vehicle for this what he describes as the "unnatural perversion" of sons dying before their fathers, which has affected three key figures in his story. Although a murder whodunit, the plot is secondary to the gradual revelation of its central character, Sidney Blackpool. The title persona, Harry Bright, is seen only through the descriptions of others until the dénouement of the novel, when he becomes a crucial clue to Blackpool's fate.
Read more about this topic: The Secrets Of Harry Bright (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)