Speaking to you on oh so many levels
Come spring, a writer’s thoughts turn to the classic 70s TV detective Columbo.
Of all of the character’s signature traits (shabby raincoat, cigar, unseen wife, “one more thing . . . “) the smoking, rattling, backfiring Peugot 403 is my favorite.
The bad guy always sees this car and mistakenly reads Lt. Columbo as an incompetent buffoon.
The audience sees this car and correctly reads Lt. Columbo as an intelligent eccentric who has a singular point of view and unique insights into the world. (If he drove an old Chevy it wouldn’t be the same.)
For this prompt, I want you to come up with a P.I. and his or her ride.
1. Create a P.I.
2. Pick a car for said P.I.
3. Identify what the car says to the people in the fictional detective’s fictional world
4. Identify what the car secretly signals to the reader
Try not to get bogged down in scene. Don’t make it pretty. Think of this prompt as an exercise in getting better at the behind-the-scenes work.
Vroom, vroom.
1. Elmore Fitch, age 24, a P.I. based in Glencoe, Alabama, 40 miles southwest of Birmingham. He is quiet and polite, a southern gentleman, and a cunning investigator.
2. 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (the Smokey & the Bandit car).
3. To his local customers, the car says Elmore is a righteous fella, but young and cocky. To the Old South upper crust in Birmingham (who seem to be involved in a great many mysteries), the car says he is white trash, dumb and dangerous.
4. The reader knows the car was left to Elmore by his Aunt Rosalie, who raised him after his petty criminal parents split town to avoid arrest, and who mentored him in the craft of private investigation. Elmore was the only relative Rosalie could trust not to sell her prized Trans Am (a junker she restored herself) out of embarrassment. The car is a symbol of their relationship, and a reminder that one day he must solve Rosalie’s murder.
Lars–I’m hooked. More….
I don’t have anything as well thought out as Lars, but I have this image of a shabby, down-on-his-luck dude who drives this impossibly beautiful Rolls, a present from his ex who otherwise left him with nothing. The car is expensive and impractical, and people think he’s a richy rich jerk for driving it, but he keeps it because of something, something.
So to the people in the world he’s vain, or a fool, but the reader sees some kind of tragic loyalty, something, something.
I don’t have anything to add, but have to wonder where this particular, obscure relic of a French car originated in the writer’s imagination. The slept-in London Fog coat not unexpected but the car is genious. I think Chandler chose a standard-issue grey Plymouth or Chrysler coupe for Phillip Marlowe. I suppose fitting with his working-stiff status, yet a cynical bastion of morality in amoral ’40′s Los Angeles.