PORCENTAJE DE MATERIA SECA DE TUBERCULOS

“The detective hero…has survived and is still at the heart of the story, like a secular priest expert in the extraction of confession, whose final revelation of the truth confers a vicarious absolution on all but the guilty,” declares James.168 Several authors prior to P.D. James have utilized the detective-priest in the detective fiction. G. K. Chesterton’s series, featuring Father Brown, presented an unassuming Catholic priest who solves crimes and offers absolution. Brother Cadfael, the star of Ellis Peter’s medieval English mystery series, is a monk who is also a detective. Umberto Eco tells the story Brother William of Baskerville, a fourteenth-century monk who is sent to an Italian abbey to investigate a case of heresy and ends up investigating a series of murders in his classic mystery, The Name of the Rose. The detective-priest is a popular character in fiction because authors are able to write about theological matter through their characters. The detective-priest must be a tool of God because he or she must free the victim from his or her oppressor by giving him or her voice after discovering the truth. Daniel Smith-Christopher explains how Daniel illustrates this model in the Susanna narrative when he revealed the truth of the elders’ deception. After the truth was revealed, Susanna was released from captivity.169

To illustrate the development of the priest into the detective, William David Spencer includes examples of detective-clerics from literature in his book, Mysterium and Mystery. He includes priests, such as Chesterton’s Father Brown, monks such as Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, nuns such as H.H. Holmes Sister Ursula, and many more characters. These detective-priests (or detective-nuns, etc.) are prototypical in several ways. They are defenders of truth and pursuers of justice. They are not afraid

168 _{James, Talking about Detective Fiction, 180.} 169 _{Smith-Christopher, 181.}

to get involved in the messy crimes because they maintain a higher peace and a deeper knowledge of a world beyond the one in which they are solving crimes and serving. Because of their sense of being a part of something different, these priests are all misfits.

Adam Dalgliesh is like these detective-priests. He is also a misfit. Although he is a successful policeman, he often struggles with a desire to quit the force. He is romantically unattached for most of the novels. He is a poet who artistically expresses himself even while maintaining the tough exterior expected of him. What sets Dalgliesh apart from these heroes is that he is a priest-detective. Dalgliesh is not a monk or a priest who solves crimes as an outpouring of his role as a religious man. Instead, he is a detective who plays a priestly role while he performs his duties as a detective.

His duties first include seeking truth and being an instrument for truth. Second, he must accept the confession of the sinner. Third, he delivers justice by directing the guilty party to the judicial system. This requires an arrest and subsequent trial. The detective is the mediator between the justice system and the criminal. He is also the mediator between the justice system and the victim. After a crime has occurred, both the criminal and the victim become voiceless. The victim is dead, silenced by the crime committed against him. Therefore, the victim requires an advocate to speak on his behalf. The criminal has been silenced as well. The criminal voluntarily gave up her voice when she committed the crime of murder. Until the murderer confesses, she remains voiceless. The detective gives a voice to both the victim and the murderer by mediating on their behalf. The detective gives a voice to the victim by pursuing justice on behalf of the dead and demanding payment for the

crime. To the criminal, the detective gives a voice by providing an opportunity to confess the crime, thereby allowing the criminal to regain her voice.

In describing the role of the secular priest-detective, William David Spencer claims that:

As the literature of the mystery genre became a secularization of the concealing/revealing of the great mysterium, God as orderer and focal point of unity was replaced by secular society, priest displaced by police, and the sacred act of repentance and reconciliation displaced by indictment and punishment. The detective as secular priest now identified the person out of unity, the antisocial criminal, and exacted society’s punishment.170

The detective plays the role of a mediator and redeemer. The detective has a Christ-like role. However, the detective is merely human and therefore his or her attempts to mediate and redeem will be mere reflections of those made by Christ. It is in this manner that the detective plays a priestly role. He must mirror the role of Christ by mediating for the innocent as well as the guilty. Because of the priests’ and the detectives’ imperfection, the final mediation will suffice but be flawed. Evidence lies in a dead victim who is only given a voice once he is dead and a murderer who is only given a voice once she confesses and then suffers the consequences of her crimes.

Dalgliesh is similar to the detective-priests of literature in that he often finds a sense of camaraderie within the church community. His relationship with priests and his ability to speak their language, read their books, and recite their prayers all dictate that although he may be an outsider to the world, he is an insider to the church. Dalgliesh views his detection as a calling. Just as priests are called to their ministry, Dalgliesh is called to his detection. He pursues his calling with passion, dedication, and self-sacrifice. He is willing to give up his life in the line of duty (Unnatural

Causes, The Black Tower, and Devices and Desires). At times, Dalgliesh aches to leave the force but seems inexplicably tied to his profession. He is willing to pursue truth and justice, the foundational elements of detection, to the end even if it results in his own death.

Dalgliesh’s ability to ascertain confessions also demonstrates his role as a priest-detective. The priest listens to the confessions of the sinners and then absolves them of guilt by instructing the sinner to perform certain ritualistic prayers, penances, or modifications of behavior. Typically, sinners seek out priests to make a confession. The sinner may seek out a detective to a make a confession, although usually he has to persuade the culprit to do so. If the sinner is a Christian, then he or she already knows the consequences of his or her failure to make a confession. Yet in the context of a detective story, the detective must make the culprit aware of the consequences of the un-confessed crime. Dalgliesh receives the confessions of murderers and the penance that he prescribes is that the culprit suffers the consequences of his or her crimes.

In several ways, the seriousness about which Dalgliesh goes about his task of directing the guilty ones into the justice system sets him apart from many mystery novel detectives, especially the hardboiled genre detectives. Those detectives believe that it is their task to not only seek out truth, hear the confession, but also to punish the criminal in their manner of private justice. Dalgliesh does not carry out personal vendettas of justice. Instead, he always maintains personal integrity and stays within the justice system, trusting that the justice system will carry out the final and appropriate from of justice. In this way, he is similar to a priest who trusts God as the final judge who delivers justice.