Судебный следователь, адвокат, благородный филантроп: Ранняя русская уголовная проза 1860–1890-х гг. в поисках героя-расследователя

Abstract

The article is devoted to the process of searching for the “detective hero” by early Russian crime fiction of the 1860–1880s. With the posthumous new rise of E. Sue’s popularity on the background – thanks to V. Krestovsky’s novel “The Slums of St. Petersburg,” – it could be a character like Prince Rodolphe of Gerolstein, an almost omnipotent restorer of social justice, operating with equal dexterity both in slums and in high society. As criminal fiction works with elements of “mysterymania” (imitation of “The Mysteries of Paris” in one form or another), we analyze in chronological order the collection of essays “The Mysteries of Moscow” by M. M. Maksimov, the novels “Child” and “Killer” by P. A Salmanov, “Odessa Catacombs” by V. M. Antonov and “New Broom” by A. A. Shklyarevsky. Crime fiction, where the forces of good and evil are differentiated and fight against each other, should not welcome “Rodolphe-like” characters, but they still infiltrate it – as experiments of certain writers with the emerging genre. The composition and characterology of the above-mentioned works helps to understand why by the 1880s. the few romantic “slum princes” (and along with them other private detectives) are confidently being replaced by the realistic judicial investigator.