Last Updated: 22 September 2024
Many readers like their detectives tough; emotionally unavailable, unshockable, an eye unseared by any of the harrowing things they have to see. Detectives are allowed to be alcoholics (indeed it is almost encouraged), divorced, yes. Smokers, of course. Scruffy, yes, within reason. They can have all sorts of human weaknesses, except, it seems, displaying emotion in front of the reader.