Moralists, Pragmatists, and Rogues: Bureaucrats in Modern Mysteries

In Deception on His Mind, a mystery by Elizabeth George (1997), Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers of Scotland Yard faces some difficult ethical dilemmas. Havers, who is scheduled for a vacation, has become friendly with a bubbly eight-year-old Pakistani girl who lives with her solemn father, Mr. Azhar, in a London flat. When Havers learns that the girl and her father are leaving hastily for Essex, where a Pakistani man has been murdered, she decides to follow them there "in the hopes of keeping them out of the nick" (66). On arriving, Havers finds a community seething with racial prejudice and paranoia. Unexpectedly, she is asked by the investigating officer, an old friend, to act as the police department's intermediary to the Pakistani community; at the same time, Mr. Azhar is acting as the Pakistani community's intermediary to the police. Havers does not tell the investigating officer that she knows Mr. Azhar, nor does she tell Mr. Azhar that she has followed him and his daughter to Essex. As events spin out of control, Havers discovers that deception and disloyalty place her in an untenable position, yet she also finds that unvarnished honesty and obedience could jeopardize her friends. In a final terrifying scene, Havers must decide where her true obligations lie. Readers who ride this ethical rollercoaster with Havers must themselves choose between honesty and friendship, between loyalty and openmindedness, and ultimately between life and death. In many other mysteries, bureaucrats struggle with equally vexing ethical dilemmas. They must decide whether their fealty is to their boss, their organization, the law, or their conscience. They must decide whether tactics that we would normally condemn, such as lying, are praiseworthy in certain situations. They must decide whether intervention by elected officials constitutes democracy at work or a threat to legitimate norms and procedures. They must decide whether a personal moral code trumps the collective wisdom of the bureaucracy or the community. In this article, I examine contemporary mysteries as a source of insight into the ethical dilemmas that bureaucrats face at work, with the intent of stimulating greater pedagogical use of mysteries in the classroom and beyond. Why turn to mysteries rather than real-life vignettes, hypothetical examples, or some other body of literature? Mysteries feature stark, vivid examples of bureaucratic conflicts and ethical dilemmas, with high stakes certain to grab the reader's attention and concentrate the mind. In making an explicit case for greater use of fiction in the classroom, Waldo (1968, 8) indirectly highlighted a striking advantage of mysteries: "Through literary treatments we can more closely come to grips with the psychological and moral aspects of administrative decision-making." In mysteries, unlike in real life, we have access to the most private thoughts of bureaucrats: doubts, values, beliefs, prejudices, and moral impulses. All of that, and more, is grist for our mill. To better understand bureaucrats' ethical dilemmas, I examine the works of a dozen contemporary mystery writers, each of whom features at least one civil servant as protagonist. The authors include Nevada Barr, Michael Connelly, Patricia Cornwell, Michael Dibdin, Earl Emerson, Elizabeth George, P.D. James, Tony Hillerman, Stuart Kaminsky, Linda Fairstein, Archer Mayor, and Ian Rankin. The mysteries take place in several countries, including the United States (Barr, Connelly, Cornwell, Emerson, Hillerman, Fairstein, and Mayor), the United Kingdom (George, James, Rankin), Italy (Dibdin), and Russia (Kaminsky). Although police officers predominate, one also finds a medical examiner (Cornwell), firefighter (Emerson), assistant district attorney (Fairstein), and park ranger (Barr) in this collection of books. For each author, I examine at least two books, and often more. I begin by sketching several distinct roles played by fictional bureaucrats, who may approach ethics as moralists, pragmatists, or rogues. …