The Hardboiled Detective as Moralist: Ethics in Crime Fiction

Abstract

Abstract Although much has been written to show that literature can influence the moral character, the consensus seems to be that novels which are hard to read are good for you, and those which are not are bad. If that is the case, rather than a mere prejudice on the writers’ parts, then the view that literature is morally valuable is paradoxical. What is the point of something being useful for moral education if it is only accessible to a minority of adult readers? If novels are to form a part of moral education, then they had better be accessible to most readers at an age where their characters are not yet fully formed. So it would be nice if novels which do not fall into the category of ‘high literature’, but not into the junk-fiction category either, were good for one’s character. The argument of this chapter is that a certain kind of genre fiction can be morally valuable: the modern hardboiled detective novel. I shall begin, however, by arguing for the broader claim that literature in general, and fiction such as novels in particular, can be morally valuable.