Joyce Porter and the Joy of Failure

 Joyce Porter and the Joy of Failure

 

Many detectives move from success to success.  Perry Mason keeps getting his innocent clients exonerated, and in one famous instance, the one time a verdict doesn’t go his way, he manages to fix it within a few pages.  Even Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot had cases that didn’t go as they might have hoped, leading the great detectives to tell their best friends to say “Norbury” and “Chocolate Box” to temper their egos.  Even Columbo had one case where he’s compelled to arrest an innocent person at the end when that party confesses to save the last days of the real perpetrator, who is terminally ill and will face an unearthly justice very soon.

 

But for Joyce Porter, her detectives routinely fail to various extents.  DCI Dover never solves a case entirely successfully.  Sometimes he accuses the wrong person, only for the truth to be revealed by some other means.  Often, his solution is only partly correct, and he gets the motive or a guilty party wrong.  On occasion, the case is solved by a colleague or the guilty party’s spontaneous confession.

 

Likewise, reluctant spy Eddie Brown never pulls off an assignment exactly as it’s meant to be completed.  There’s always something that goes sideways, or some slip-up that ruins all of his plans.  Unlike the James Bond archetype, Eddie Brown is never really in control of a situation. 

 

Perhaps the Hon Con has it worst, as she invariably solves the case, but she never gets the recognition and acclaim that she deserves.  One way or another, she’s shamed when she ought to be praised, or at least thanked.  Yet she keeps on going, perhaps because she has a desire for justice, maybe because she keeps thinking that eventually she’ll get the applause she craves.

 

Porter’s protagonists are never totally satisfied in the results of their cases, but the readers are invariably pleased by the satisfactory nature of the books’ endings, thematically speaking.  Porter loves to see her characters humbled, possibly because the permanently dignified and successful are rarely very funny.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27^th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.