In the age of anti-police sen­ti­ment, why do we still love detec­tive sto­ries so much?

For avid detec­tive film fans, 2022 was a god­send. From Matt Reeve’s neo-noir iter­a­tion of Bat­man to the return of Daniel Craig in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mys­tery, the year saw entries into the genre offer nuanced cri­tiques on gen­der, priv­i­lege and more. Oth­er cin­e­mat­ic offer­ings includ­ed See How They Run and Death on the Nile, while this spring sees the long-await­ed return of Idris Elba as the hard­boiled cop­per John Luther in Luther: The Fall­en Sun. Rang­ing from camp and comedic to sar­don­ic and goth­ic, the detec­tive sto­ry has nev­er been so ver­sa­tile, and if the influx of Benoit Blanc com­pi­la­tions cur­rent­ly flood­ing Tik­Tok is any indi­ca­tion, the genre might just be more pop­u­lar than ever before too.

This sud­den detec­tive renais­sance is per­haps sur­pris­ing, as the past few years have seen police abo­li­tion­ist dis­course has reached an all-time high. The death of George Floyd in May 2020 ignit­ed vital con­ver­sa­tions across the inter­net about police bru­tal­i­ty and the rife issue of sys­temic racism among offi­cers. Although Black activists have spent decades fight­ing the struc­tur­al racism embed­ded in the Amer­i­can polic­ing sys­tem, Floyd’s death brought unprece­dent­ed atten­tion to the top­ic like nev­er before. This isn’t just an issue lim­it­ed to the US – police bru­tal­i­ty and racial pro­fil­ing are prob­lems in Britain as well.

Less than a year after Floyd’s death, in March 2021, the mur­der of Sarah Ever­ard com­mit­ted by an off-duty Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan police offi­cer turned many cop-scep­tics into full-blown ACAB pro­po­nents. It was advised that those who were now con­cerned about the legit­i­ma­cy of plain­clothes offi­cers should wave ​‘a bus down’, woe­ful­ly over­look­ing the fact that Everard’s rapist and mur­der­er pre­sent­ed him­self as an offi­cer in order to kid­nap her, and was already wide­ly known ​‘the rapist’ at work. My own trust in the police has wavered after see­ing too many vic­tims let down by the very peo­ple who are sup­posed to pro­tect us. While many offi­cers sign up with the inten­tion of serv­ing the pub­lic, it’s hard not to feel dis­il­lu­sioned when count­less oth­ers stand by cor­rup­tion, either unwill­ing or legal­ly unable to do any­thing about it. How is it, then, that the detec­tive genre has gar­nered such wide­spread pop­u­lar­i­ty, includ­ing with those who nor­mal­ly hold staunch­ly police-crit­i­cal views?

I first asked myself this while watch­ing the adap­ta­tion of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (2018). A pro­found­ly dark mys­tery, the minis­eries fol­lows jour­nal­ist Camille Preak­er (Amy Adams) return­ing to her Mis­souri home­town to cov­er the death of two local girls. Camille quick­ly forms a romance with Chris Messina’s Detec­tive Richard Willis, who offers her intel on the case as she divulges the secrets of the town and its inhab­i­tants to him. Camille reveals she was gang-raped by a teenag­er – some­thing sug­gest­ed to be the norm in a place like Wind Gap where archa­ic ideas about gen­der and sex are espoused as tra­di­tion. Yet, for a sto­ry that so acute­ly por­trays the kinds of sex­u­al vio­lence young women expe­ri­ence, the cul­mi­na­tion of Flynn’s mys­tery fails to embold­en any sort of crit­i­cal ideas on polic­ing or the sys­temic fail­ure to com­pre­hen­sive­ly inves­ti­gate rape.

Like Sharp Objects, my love of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is unwa­ver­ing but requires an ele­ment of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance to prop­er­ly enjoy. Craig’s per­for­mance as Blanc is charm­ing, but sur­pass­ing his play­ful South­ern drawl are his inef­fa­bly time­ly mono­logues. A tes­ta­ment to the polit­i­cal polar­i­ty of the Trump era, Knives Out uses con­ver­sa­tions about race, rad­i­cal­ism, migrants, and class to con­struct a well-craft­ed mys­tery where jus­tice is served not only through catch­ing the killer but also by watch­ing the down­fall of the über-wealthy. The police are not the heroes here, as it’s ulti­mate­ly Blanc the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor who solves Har­lan Thrombey’s mur­der, while Lakei­th Stanfield’s Detec­tive Lieu­tenant Elliot and Noah Segan’s Troop­er Wag­n­er pri­mar­i­ly serve as com­ic relief in their min­i­mal screen time. But for all of Knives Out’s com­men­tary on hard­line Repub­li­can poli­cies on immi­gra­tion, the role that the police play in uphold­ing them doesn’t mer­it a mention.

Many detec­tive sto­ries, such as the afore­men­tioned, for­go reflect­ing on the state of the police force alto­geth­er. Per­haps there isn’t space with­in a film’s two-hour run time to do the top­ic jus­tice, or the grim real­i­ty of polic­ing is too mor­bid a note for a who­dun­nit caper to car­ry. Mean­while, the top­ic of police cor­rup­tion is at the very cen­tre of The Bat­man and the BBC’s huge­ly pop­u­lar police pro­ce­dur­al Line of Duty, but like many recent entries into the detec­tive genre, both nar­ra­tives offer an unsat­is­fac­to­ry mes­sage of #NotAll­Cops.

In Jef­frey Wright’s gruff por­tray­al of Com­mis­sion­er Jim Gor­don we see a char­ac­ter who is emphat­i­cal­ly ​‘good’, despite the rife moral debase­ment of his fel­low offi­cers. As Christi­na New­land sug­gests, The Bat­man ​‘nev­er does go far enough to sug­gest – as in many of the tru­ly great film noirs it bor­rows from – that the entire insti­tu­tion­al edi­fice of cops and politi­cians might be beyond redemption.’

While dis­cussing the ethics of crime films with friends and acquain­tances, there was a mutu­al agree­ment that the enjoy­ment we get from watch­ing them requires a sort of sus­pen­sion of belief. But I’ve realised that it’s nev­er the hero cop or the rook­ie police offi­cer that draws me to the detec­tive genre; it’s the promise of a com­pelling mys­tery and sat­is­fy­ing res­o­lu­tion. While these sto­ries are large­ly inter­twined with the insti­tu­tion of the police, it’s not a neces­si­ty for an enjoy­able detec­tive story.

It’s here that the future of the detec­tive genre lies. The unpre­dictable qual­i­ty of Ryan Murphy’s Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry has seen many view­ers lose inter­est in the anthol­o­gy series over the course of its 11-year tenure, but many fans (myself includ­ed) were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the lat­est sea­son, which focus­es on a series of mur­ders of gay men in the 1980s. The series’ sub­ver­sive mys­tery is solved in spite of the cops, most of whom are homo­phobes symp­to­matic of atti­tudes towards New York’s LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in the ear­ly ​‘80s. Unlike ear­li­er series of Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry, the hor­ror ele­ment of the show is ground­ed in real­i­ty, found in the apa­thy of police and the vio­lence against queer folk.

Although Glass Onion’s con­clu­sion is far less ful­fill­ing than Knives Out, it avoids the pit­falls of the first film as no police are involved in solv­ing the mys­tery. After the ruth­less Miles (Edward Nor­ton) burns the nap­kin link­ing him to Andi’s mur­der (Janelle Monáe), her twin Helen (also Monáe) is left defeat­ed when Blanc tells her that he must answer to ​‘the police, the courts, the sys­tem’. With this, Helen knows that if her sister’s death was left up to the law, then she will like­ly nev­er find the jus­tice that she longs for. In an act of vengeance, Helen destroys Miles’ house and all that’s in it – includ­ing the Mona Lisa. While Glass Onion fails to deliv­er legal jus­tice for its’ hero­ine, it’s cer­tain­ly grat­i­fy­ing watch­ing a bil­lion­aire see his home, for­tune, busi­ness, and rep­u­ta­tion set aflame.

With mys­ter­ies like AHS: NYC and Knives Out offer­ing refresh­ing takes on the who­dun­nit, I’m hold­ing out hope that the future of the detec­tive sto­ry is bright. While the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of police-affil­i­at­ed detec­tives like Her­cule Poirot and Sher­lock Holmes will prob­a­bly live on, new char­ac­ters such as Benoit Blanc promise a much-need­ed revival of the genre for the abo­li­tion­ist epoch.