Redemption?

We have now read 3 novels and watched three movies, and I feel that nearly every one of them has something interesting in common that I wander if it is on purpose or mere coincidence. In “Brick,” The Big Sleep, and gun with occasional music, and maybe Auster a little, the detective, just as we would expect, comes to some big dramatic conclusion of the case by the end of the novel. They get to the end put the pieces all together and surprise someone, maybe even us the reader, with what really happened. The only problem however is that, in every single one of these works someone/ multiple people end up dying before the case is solved; often these deaths occur to the person for whom you’re investigating, i.e. “Brick." Either way, most of these deaths seem preventable in a perfect world.

Maybe that’s the whole point then, maybe it’s not supposed to be perfect, but rather real; a real world. These thoughts have lead me to question whether or not these happenings are a genre thing. Maybe this is noir or this is 20th century detective work. Maybe its art, real world with a dash of metaphor and a pinch satire.

Ahh, or maybe this is the quote, “In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.” That’s great, here you go; all of the works mentioned above have qualities of redemption in them. All of them let someone die on their watch, but in the end they still managed to solve the case, maybe feel some sort of redemption themselves and definitely give some to someone else. In GWOM Metcalf obtains his own personal redemption when he witnesses Orton’s release and a personal/ redemption for all the lives affected by Phoneblum’s antics when he throws the whole story in his face and then kills Joey before he can harm anyone else. Similar instances can be seen in the Big Sleep and Brick. BUT the question still remains is this the kind of redemption that this quote is talking about? Is this in virtually every work of this genre? And most importantly why redempiton, why is it that redemption is the all mighty power that leads to art in the noir genre?

-Brad