Baby, Baby, Baby, You're Outta Time:
Retro (Historical) Eyes

What makes an historical eye "historical"? Sue Feder, founder of the The Historical Mystery Appreciation Society and editor of Magical Mystery Tour, cheerfully uses a rather loosey goosey definition of historical, rather than a cutoff date or specific number of years. In a short essay on this very topic, she concluded that:

(I have some) discomfort with a 1983 book about 1978 being historical. But perhaps...the perception of a sense of "different-ness" (is enough)...Perhaps I may have to concede that a certain percentage of my life has slipped over that line between past and history -- what other conclusion can I reach when, after a recent viewing of the Woodstock movie of a scant 20 years ago, I think, "How quaint -- how innocent we were then."

I'm not convinced, after all, that there is a more definitive answer -- I'm not sure one can pick a number and say this is the "line of demarcation." I do think that the recognition of an entire generation of legal adults who were not yet born when my well-remembered younger days
were The Present serves to put the passage of time in perspective.

Perhaps the answer is that, if one can say from the vantage point of when the book was written about the events in the book, "Those sure were different times" -- it is history."

From a practical point of view, one would think this would be at least one full generation -- 25 years, making the effective "cutoff," if you will, the mid-70s. Lots of PI-wiggle room there, I think!

That sounds good enough for me. so here, without further ado, is my first stab at a list of historical eyes. Be patient, and feel free to join in at any time...

• Marcus Didius Falco by Lindsey Davis (Ancient Rome)
• Gordianus the Finder by Steven Saylor (Ancient Rome)
• William Monk by Anne Perry (1850's London)
• Harp by J.D. Christilain (1870's New York)
• Maggie Maguire by Kate Bryan (1875 San Francisco)
• Oscar Schiller by Douglas C. Jones (late 1800's Arkansas)
• Fremont Jones by Dianne Day (early 1900's, U.S.)
• Molly Murphy by Rhys Bowen (early 1900s, New York City)
• Valentin St. Cyr by David Fulmer (Storyville, New Orleans, turn of the century)
• Sam Klein by Allan Levine (1911-20, Winnipeg, Canada)
• Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (WWI-era England)
• Philip Beaumont and Jane Tanner by Walter Satterthwait (1920's Pinkerton ops, U.S., Europe)
• J.J. "Jake" Gittes by Robert Towne (1930's Los Angeles)
• Bernie Gunther by Philip Kerr (1938-1947, Berlin, Vienna)
• Nate Heller by Max Allan Collins (1930-70's, Chicago, etc.)
• Jack LeVine by Andrew Bergman (1940-s-50's New York, Hollywood)
• Toby Peters by Stuart Kaminsky (1940's, Hollywood)
• Easy Rawlins by Walter Mosley (1945-present, Los Angeles)
• Lucien Caye by O'Neil De Noux (post-WWII Louisiana)
  .
• Plus here's some other folks who have been suggested by some helpful historical mystery fans.
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• Bronwen Llyr by Miriam Grace Monfredo
  A female Pinkerton op.
• Captain Nash by Ragan Butler (1770's, England)
  Arguably England's first private detective in Captain Nash and the Honour of England (1975) and Captain Nash and the Wroth Inheritance (1977).
• Benjamin Weaver by David Liss (early 18th century London)
  Appearred in A Conspiracy of Papers.
• What about Lynda Robinson's Lord Meren? I guess he's more directly part of the pharaoh's government , but most of Falco's cases come from on high, however independent he is. Open this door, though, and you have to check Robb's Owen Archer and C.L. Grace's soldier-investigator.
• An easier case could be made for Tremayne's Sister Fidelma. She is in fact a trained investigator, though her "employment" seems to be thrust upon her either because she's the king's sister and is given an assignment or because it's her duty to investigate when she stumbles over a body exactly because she is an authorized (licensed?) investigator. I can't remember that she gets paid, though.
• Teona Tone's 1899 female sleuth runs her own detective agency (two mid-1980s books), and Marian J.A. Jackson's young woman wants to be the first female investigator in the series opener. Though she's dissuaded by Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain encourages her. I think she actually gets some high society cases, but memory fails.
• James D. Brewer's post-Civil War duo. One character is, I'm pretty sure, a P.I.
• Sigismondo, an Italian Renaissance mercenary in the series by Elizabeth Eyre.