"I'm in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they don't want to take to the cops." That's Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, succinctly setting out our image of the private eye. A no-nonsense loner, working on the margins of society, working in the darkness to shine a little light. The reality is a little different--but no less fascinating. In The Legendary Detective, John Walton offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of...
"I'm in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they don't want to take to the cops." Tha...