20 Favorite Fictional Detectives

Recently, someone asked me who my favorite fictional characters have been. Many of them were detectives, mysteries being my main source of entertainment. So below is my very subjective listing of favorite fictional detectives:

1 and 2. The Bobbsey Twins and Encyclopedia Brown. These were among the first books I remember reading, and they’ve influenced many a mystery lover.
3. Sherlock Holmes. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, this detective is timeless. He still captures our imaginations, as can be seen by the current-day reincarnations (Robert Downey Jr. on the big screen and Benedict Cumberbatch in the current PBS series) and inspirations (the TV series House). There are many Holmes purists, but I like to see even the modern-day adaptations.
4. Inspector Morse. Colin Dexter wrote 13 novels, but mostly we know Morse through the TV series, and the late actor John Thaw. Even Colin Dexter admits that Thaw became, for him, Morse. Intellectually snobbish, pig-headed, often sharp with underling Lewis, and always unlucky in love, Morse was redeemed by his great intellect, humor and moments of vulnerability.
5. Inspector Robbie Lewis and DS James Hathaway. A spinoff from Morse, Insp. Lewis is more down-to-earth, working-class, but with a sharper edge in the new series, following the murder of his wife. Hathaway, tall and good-looking, is the intellectual here, but without the snobbery. It’s become one of my favorite PBS shows.
6. Insp. John Rebus. Ian Rankin’s creation is smart -- and smart-alecky. His demons are alcohol and women (divorced, and also often unlucky in love). Like Morse, he’s unorthodox and always battling his bosses. And like Morse, he’s also a loner and strangely vulnerable. Rankin retired him after 17 books in Exit Music. He’s been portrayed by John Hannah and Ken Stott on TV, but neither really seemed like Rebus to me. In this case, the books are definitely better.
7. Insp. Adam Dalgliesh. Ah, the poet-detective from New Scotland Yard, the silent but sensitive man. P.D. James created him in 1962 with Cover Her Face. In 2008, James, now 90, wrote what may be her last Dalgliesh novel, The Private Patient. The slowly-aging Dalgliesh is now facing retirement and married. Originally portrayed by Roy Marsden on TV, Martin Shaw took over the role later -- and, to my mind, is Dalgliesh.
8 and 9. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Some may criticize Agatha Christie for weak characterization, but she did give us two of the most well-known and well-loved detectives: private investigator Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer living in London (first seen in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920) , and amateur detective Jane Marple, the elderly spinster of St. Mary Mead (first seen in The Murder at the Vicarage, 1930). David Suchet has long portrayed Poirot on TV, and now it’s hard to picture anyone else. Miss Marple has been played by many actresses, most notably Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
10. DCI Jane Tennison. This ITV production (Prime Suspect) featured Helen Mirren portraying a tough-as-nails detective who often put work before family, and who slid into alcoholism as the series progressed. So well acted by Mirren, Tennison almost doesn’t seem fictional. The series is said to have served as inspiration for The Closer in the U.S.
11. Adrian Monk. Portrayed by Tony Shalhoub on the USA Network, this obsessive-compulsive private eye was funny -- and also heart-breaking, as a lonely former San Francisco police detective who now worked on his own. His two aims in life: find out who killed his wife and return to the police force. A wonderful cast backed Shalhoub: assistants Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) and Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Lt. Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford). I still miss this show.
12. Spenser. The character created by Robert B. Parker in his books came to TV with Robert Urich. I liked the books, but I really loved the TV series. Spenser is the detective you would want to date: tough and good-looking, but a gourmet cook who can quote poetry. Alas, he already had a girlfriend.
13. V.I. Warshawski. This Chicago private detective, created by Sara Paretsky, is tough, independent and no-nonsense. A little grittier than some other female detectives, and maybe a little harder to love.
14. Kinsey Milhone. In some ways, a cousin to Warshawski, although not as tough. The California detective is smart, athletic, principled -- and only owns one good dress, a black number she can scrunch up in her purse and still wear. At least Kinsey (written by Sue Grafton) has stopped giving herself haircuts.
15. Kate Shugak. Another tough woman, she’s a native Alaskan (Aleut) created by Dana Stabenow. Shugak, once an investigator for the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office, now works alone and finds herself in all sorts of situations, going undercover on a fishing boat and posing as an old field worker.
16. Samantha Kinsey. Ok, this TV detective is really light-weight, but I was hooked on the show (Mystery Woman on Hallmark) nonetheless. I could see myself as Samantha (though she was probably better portrayed by Kellie Martin): a murder mystery buff who owns a bookstore and whose hobby is photography. And, of course, always happening upon a situation where she could sleuth. Nothing that good ever happens to me. Maybe if I owned a bookstore?
17. Lt. Columbo. There were no whodunits in these TV shows -- as viewers, we knew who the killer was -- but it was still great to see the seemingly-bumbling but really-brilliant Columbo (Peter Falk) solve the case.
18. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I saw the TV series (Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton) before every picking up one of Rex Stout’s books, and it was a case of a TV series influencing me to later read some of the books. Nero is an overweight gourmand who pays more attention to his orchids than to people, but can solve a case without even leaving his brownstone. He has his assistant, Archie, for all the legwork. The A&E series is said to have closely followed the books.
19. Aimée Leduc. Now here’s a female P.I. quite different from the others I’ve mentioned. For one thing, she lives in Paris and dresses in vintage Channel and Dior, even wearing high heels while chasing bad guys (or being chased). But she’s tough in her own right. Created by Cara Black, Leduc is half-American, half-French (there’s also a mystery surrounding her mother). She has a great sidekick in René Friant, a dwarf and computer expert.
20. Leroy Jethro Gibbs and the rest of the NCIS cast. One of the best TV shows today -- underrated, in my opinion. Great characters, great mystery story lines, a dark undercurrent, yet with lots of humor. This really is an ensemble cast, although Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is at the heart of it.

Who are your favorite fictional detectives?

Murder in the Rue de Paradis by Cara Black

Protagonist: Aimee Leduc
Setting: Paris
Rating: 3.7

A reviewer once compared the Leduc series to Kinsey Millhone, and it's not too far off. While Aimee is much, much more fashionable (this being Paris, after all) and she has a sidekick to get her out of trouble, fans of Kinsey will probably also enjoy this series, which gets better with each book. In Murder in the Rue de Paradis, the eighth in the series, Aimee's on-and-off-again lover, Yves, returns to Paris and asks Aimee to marry him. She says yes, but after one night together, Yves is murdered. Although police are investigating, they're also hiding something from Aimee. As Aimee investigates, this becomes a story about Kurdish and Turkish politics, and a sleeper jihadist sleeper cell that is scheming an assassination. Black manages to pull all this off, along with a surprise twist at the end.

April reads

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott (audio)
Protagonist: Lydia Brooke
Setting: Cambridge
Rating: 3.5
Lydia Brooke is asked by her former lover Cameron to finish a book on alchemy and Newton that was almost completed by his mother, who recently died in suspicious circumstances (drowned, clutching a glass prism). Lydia takes on the job of ghostwriter, finding that Cameron's mother had made some ties to 17th-century deaths and very similar present-day deaths. Usually, while I love the gothic and historical mysteries, Ghostwalk seems to ramble on a bit too much, throwing in an ill-fated romance and a storyline about radical animal-rights activists. In the end, the story was just not haunting enough to move it into the category of great mysteries.

Sideswipe by Charles Willeford (third in a series)
Protagonist: Hoke Moseley
Setting: Miami and Riviera Beach
Rating: 3.0
Willeford takes two separate story lines and ties them up neatly at the end. An old man becomes caught up with a convict, and you know it isn't going to end well. In the meantime, Moseley goes off the deep end, deciding he doesn't want to be a police officer anymore. Still, he manages to solve a crime here and there.

Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black (seventh in the series)
Protagonist: Aimee Leduc
Setting: Ile Saint-Louis, Paris
Rating: 4.0
A while back, I had read another in the Aimee Leduc series and not been bowled over. Lucky for me that I tried this, the seventh in the series. The character has become more rounded and interesting, and the plot -- involving environmental activists, bombings and an unexpected dip in the Seine -- was a great read. In this book, Aimee, a computer security analyst, gets a late-night call from a woman, pleading for her to go down to her building's courtyard. There, Aimee finds a newborn. Aimee, usually dressed in chic Chanel dresses and Manolo Blahnik shoes, immediately falls in love with baby Stella, nevermind the spit-up on her designer dresses. With one of the best sidekicks in detective fiction, Aimee is off to try to find the baby's mother -- and solve a murder or two along the way.

Angels in the Gloom by Anne Perry (3rd in a series, audio)
Protagonist: Reavley siblings
Setting: St. Giles, England
Rating: 4.0
Each book in this series just gets better. In this one, Joseph Reavley, injured at the front, returns to the quiet village of St. Giles. Perry's descriptions of war were riveting in the previous book, but so are her descriptions of the desperation in the men and women left behind -- especially the women, many of whom have lost their sons and husbands in war, and who are assuming greater roles in business. Of course, even in a quiet town such as St. Giles, there's a murder -- one of the men working on a top-secret project expected to change the outcome of the war. As Joseph investigates, Matthew Reavley is falling in love with a double agent and trying to find the identity of The Peacemaker, the man who killed the Reavleys' parents and is trying to bring peace, even at the cost of England. These books are much more than just mysteries; they are a sympathetic look into the costs of a world war.


The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang (first in the series, audio)
Protagonist: Mei Wang
Setting: Beijing
Rating: 4.7
When Mei Wang loses her job at the Ministry of Public Security, she opens her own detective agency (outlawed in China, so she has to call it information consultancy). Her first client is her uncle, who asks her to look into a Han dynasty jade stolen from a museum. This is so much more than a detective novel, though; the language is so detailed and so beautiful we feel we are reading a memoir -- the life of Mei's mother hangs in the balance after a stroke, and Mei's former-but-never-forgotten boyfriend returns for a visit from San Francisco. Author Liang, born in China and exiled after her involvement with the students' revolt that led to the Tiananmen Square massacre, has also written a memoir. Her second in the Mei Wang series, Paper Butterfly, is due out in May. I'm looking forward to reading both.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Protagonist: Richard Papen (narrator)
Setting: Vermont
Rating: 4.7
The murder happens on the first page of this book, but I was still spellbound enough to read the 500-page book in a few days. The novel unwinds everything that happened before -- what led a tightknit group of college kids to kill one of their own -- and what happens afterward. The group are scholars in classic Greek, and the story itself plays out like a modern Greek tragedy. This is a carefully constructed story, and well worth reading.


The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman
Rating: 4.0
For 103 years, until 1969, more than 8,000 people afflicted with leprosy were exiled by the government to a remote piece of land, surrounded by high cliffs, in what author John Tayman calls the "longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history, and perhaps the most misguided." This is the story of that segregation. Tayman not only tells us the history, but gives us some of the personal stories as well. Some of the handful of residents still left on Molokai have panned the book, but I found it to be a sensitive and moving story of what happened there, and what the government allowed to happen.

Rating system:
5.0: Wow!
4.0: Pretty good
3.0: Mediocre to good
2.0: Pretty Bad
DNF: Did not finish