not mean this in the sense that there was no good lawyer
except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably had
in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought
to bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action.
It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense
a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that
it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer.
There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look
for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the
Philistines.

The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just
opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their
fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between
the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and
complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or
otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than
even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is
engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only
his reports and his bill--which are poor comfort, to say the
least. And yet he may have really worked eighteen hours a day
in your service. But a dishonest detective has only to
disappear (and take his ease for the same period) and send you
his reports and his bill--and you will have only his word for
how much work he has done and how much money he has spent.
You are absolutely in his power--unless you hire another
detective to watch HIM. Consequently there is no class in the
world where the temptation to dishonesty is greater than among
detectives. This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the
evidence of the police detective is received with so much