[LMB] Canonical Detectives

[Pouncer at aol.com]

>> If anyone wants to speculate about mysteries set  during
>> Barrayar's Time of Isolation, feel free. Would they be like  Maria 
>> Snyder's _Poison Study_, Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael,  
>
>there has to be a peter whimsey type, or a bertie wooster.   the two 
>extremes-the upper class is a bunch of useless fops, the valet  or 
>butler figures things out. or, the useless fop is really clever, if  
>only he could apply himself.
 
Miles and Ivan could overly-easily be pigeon-holed as Wimsey  and
Wooster. 
 
I rather like the notion of Mark and Ivan as Nero Wolfe and Archie 
Goodwin, myself. Mark in the kitchen with Ma Kosti instead of 
Fritz then down in the butterbug lab with Enrique rather than up 
in the orchid-attic with Horst ... Ivan out romancing the ladies and 
chatting up the rich folks, coming home to report with perfect recall 
of the dialog, but no consideration of what it all might mean until 
prompted by the fat man behind the desk. Pym and Roic as Saul
and Orrie  ... Oh yeah, that could be made to work. 
 
All missing the proffered point, I'm afraid. In the ToI, we're
not  comparing contemporary Barrayarans like Miles or Kou&Drou. 
(ooh, ooh,  I just flashed on Kou & Drou as Tuppence and  Tommy!
Er, the other way 'round, of course.) It's open territory to speculate 
on the sorts of police, detectives,  criminals, rebels and spies 
Barrayarans had, or fantasize about, comparable to Robin Hood 
or Brother Cadfael.  I wind up supposing we'd get an Ingrey-like
trouble-shooter, except for a Vorish Count instead of the Hallowed
King. Not a bad thing, by the way.  
 
In first reading _Curse of Chalion_ I'd supposed Caz's investigation 
into the death-magic -- the task set by Isselle -- was going this
mode.  Wrong again.  Happens a lot. 

I have difficulty,  picturing the “hard-boiled” investigator /  detective of
the Lew Archer, Travis McGee, Spenser model in either old or new 
Barrayar. I'm not sure why. I think, maybe, the whole cynical 
attitude of this sub-genre is built around, or set against, a background 
of orderly, pleasant, and sufficient society.  A setting where most 
of the time the regular folks don't need help; where most of the time 
that they do they get it from the regular cops, and where most of 
the regular criminals mostly are content to ride along as quiet 
parasites rather than active predators. The hard boiled types jump 
in to restore the  -- imperfect – balance in a particularly limited 
way for a particular client. Ezar's Barrayar, of secret police and 
the Ministry of Political Education, would have absolutely no more 
room for a Wooster or Wimsey or Travis McGee than East German 
Stasi would have for a Kinsey Milhone.  Aral's Regency transitioned 
from repression to more movement and prosperity – but ImpSec 
would not, I think, have been particularly welcoming to freelance 
competition. It's only post-ImpWed that, I think, that the reign of 
“Gregor the Good” is so well established that, perhaps, a Jim 
Rockford type might eke out a marginal living sniffing around after 
the authorities have officially, if unsatisfactorily,  closed a case 
someone with a little disposal income might want want re-opened. 
 
On the other hand, the conventional hard-boiled detective would be 
a saint of the Dratsab in the 5GU.  The thumb upon the pivot point, 
justice outside the law, grace from the merciless ... Caz seems about 
3/4th of the way toward the model, anyway. And so we come back to 
Ingrey.  I think, or fear, we're kind of in a "been there, done that"  mode
with Lois on ToI-like investigators.  
 
OT query to the list-mind, is it double dashes that trim off  advertising
at the end of mail messages? 
 
Testing 
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