• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Favourite Legendary Crime-Busting Oddballs

Zeke Newbold

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
Joined
Apr 18, 2015
Messages
1,249
We have a thread on sherlock Holmes, as is right and proper, but I thought it might be appropriate to also have a thread devoted to ficitional detectives in general.

The Fortean aspect to this topic* lies not just in the mysterious circumstances that the sleuths have to unravel - but also in the maverick and individualistic nature of the detectives themselves.

It seems to me that Mystery and Detective fiction has become the last bastion of the Eccentric Hero - a genre where the protagonist is not only decent but also notably different than his fellow man in some way. The characters in science-fiction are often paramilitary types** (pilots, generals and so on) and in Horror Ordinary Joes - but detectives get to have quirks. I take little interest in crime - but I do love the colurfulness of the crime busting protagonists! So we have a Catholic priest detective (Father Brown), a wheelchair bound detective (Ironside), a stage magician detective (The Magician), a seriously unfit bluff Yorkshireman detective (Dalziel), an android detective (R. Daneel Olivaw) and a serial killer detective (Dexter)...and on it goes.

So...who are your favourite legendary crime busting odballs?

*I think it's Fortean enough for Fortean Culture - but if the Mods think otherwise you can relocate it to chat.

** The current exception to this being `Doctor Who` (which may expalin the show's enduring popularity).
 
Last edited:
Let me start the ball rolling with an oft forgotten gem from Twenties America: Philo Vance.

Philo Vanvce was the brianchild of an art critic called Willard Huntington Wright - who wrote as S.S. Van Dyne.

Philo Vance's distinguishing idiosyncracy is that he is an aristocrat who received an elite classical education in Europe - and is an effete aesthete who peppers his observations with abstruse High Cultural references which baffle and annoy the more conventional law men that he works alongside (you really get an education just reading a story with him in!) He is the very opposite of the `hard-boiled` detective that was becoming common in the America of that time. He solves difficult cases thorough lateral thinking and psychology rather than logic and forensics.

The novel with him in that I've read is `The Canary Murder Case` (1927) (it;s difficult to come by these days - mine is an imprint from St Petersburg, but in English). This is the classic Locked Room murder mystery.

I believe that subsequent radio and screen adaptations of Van Dyne's tales removed Vance's classical allusions and general loucheness - so you need to read the books to get the full effect. The character seems to me to be more influential than is currently given credit for: I can detect traces of Philo Vance in Inspector Morse, Jonathan Creek and The Mentalist.
 
Flawed by alcoholism, yet otherwise no-nonsense.

Rarely has a New York minute to spare for anyone, slightly dishevelled, but when he needs to deal with a criminal in the midst of a violent crime he puts his neck on the line and takes care of business.

Detective Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue.

Played by the excellent Dennis Franz (whom I met once and he was a gentleman.)

Andy_Sipowicz.jpg
 
An article on the origins of Nero Wolfe, the orchid growing, stay at home detective.
https://crimereads.com/on-the-creation-of-nero-wolfe-and-archie-goodwin/

But my favourite oddball crime buster has to the scruffy, bumbling, amiable, sometimes annoying, seemingly absent-minded Lt Columbo who lulls criminals into a false sense of security before hitting them with "Just one more thing..."
 
maximus otter said:
Stretching the theme of "crime-busting" a trifle, how about William Hope Hodgson's Thomas Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder?

Most of the Carnacki stories are about matters supernatural, but - in the spirit of Mystery, Inc. - a couple involve unmasking very human adversaries.

maximus otter
Click to expand...
Talking Pictures sometimes show a series called The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and an episode features Carnacki with Donald Pleasance as Carnacki.
 
I've the DVD set of The Rivals of ...

If we're looking outside Golden Age/Victorian period, I'd recommend the following ...

David Wishart's Marcus Corvinus, a Roman equestrian with a distain of the ruling classes, a love of wine, and insatiable quest for justice.
Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher - 1920's Australian 'flapper' and modern woman; goes completely against the grain in Melbourne and society in general.
Margery Allingham's Albert Campion - Puckish, flippant and considered silly ... but incredibly intelligent and determined. Has an enormous fund of friends, sources ... and pseudonyms.
 
Andrea Camilleri's great invention- Inspector Montalbano.

Sicily isn't the easiest of places to be a policeman, to put it mildly- but a love of good food, wine and women and two competent sidekicks to help him ensures that the investigations into the (sometimes petty, sometimes terrible) crimes are a joy to watch.
 
I always liked Jim Rockford (James Garner) from 'The Rockford Files'. If ever I had a day off school it always seemed to be on t.v just after midday.
He was always getting beaten up or shot at but without fail won out in the end.
I always liked 'Remington Steele' as well. With the dashing Pierce Brosnan as the suave conman/detective.
 
The great Randall & Hopkirk, Deceased is a great mystery premise with ghost and human united to fight crime. Ghost Hopkirk has more neurosis than Monk (another fine oddball detective series).

One that I'd really like to see is Hec Ramsey, a western detective using then on-the-edge scientific knowledge. My folks were big fans of the series, but as it was only two seasons long, it hasn't been in repeats. As IMDB describes him:
Ex-marshal Hec Ramsey decided to settle down in New Prospect, Oklahoma, where he took a job as deputy to young Police Chief Stamp, a former school teacher.. Ramsey had become tired of settling disputes with his guns, so he began studying the new art of criminology, learning about fingerprints and ballistics and contemporary methods of solving crimes. Amos Coogan was Hec's barber pal, and Nora the beautiful woman Hec was kinda "sweet" on.
Click to expand...
Tucker's Witch is another series I'd really like to see with the oddball premise of one of the partners harboring psychic abilities:
Tim Matheson and Catherine Hicks star as married couple and private-detective duo Rick and Amanda Tucker. Amanda's psychic abilities prove vital to cracking cases, yet also have a tendency to get the couple into trouble.
Click to expand...
 
Floyd1 said:
Andrea Camilleri's great invention- Inspector Montalbano.

Sicily isn't the easiest of places to be a policeman, to put it mildly- but a love of good food, wine and women and two competent sidekicks to help him ensures that the investigations into the (sometimes petty, sometimes terrible) crimes are a joy to watch.
Click to expand...
I favour Inspector Zen. He operates in Rome - which I know fairly well - and he manages to preserve a reputation for utter truthfulness ... which can sometimes be tricky.
 
Stormkhan said:
I favour Inspector Zen. He operates in Rome - which I know fairly well - and he manages to preserve a reputation for utter truthfulness ... which can sometimes be tricky.
Click to expand...
Not heard of that one.
 
Lord Lucan said:
I always liked Jim Rockford (James Garner) from 'The Rockford Files'. If ever I had a day off school it always seemed to be on t.v just after midday.
He was always getting beaten up or shot at but without fail won out in the end.
Click to expand...
And he could get in any office with just his credit card to unlock the door, find the correct cabinet and drawer, photograph the evidence he needed and get out just as a sexy secretary was on her way in.

(Trivia; where Rockford's mobile home was situated was in the same area where the Beach Boys 'Surfin' Safari' album cover was taken).
 
I've only read Holmes, Poe's Dupin stories, and Thomas Carnacki, which has been mentioned.

I recently bought the Jonathan Creek boxset. I hadn't realised before that, in spite of living in a windmill and making a living designing magic tricks, he's not really an oddball. Everyone else around him seems fascinated by him, while he's just a guy who keeps getting dragged into these crazy crimes. It's not especially well acted, and like a lot of this kind of detective fiction, credulity is stretched to breaking point and often beyond, but I did enjoy watching them.
 
Victory said:
...Detective Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue...
Click to expand...

Great character - great actor.

I have a soft spot for Det. Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito) from the first couple of seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street - sadly dropped after the second series.

JP.jpg


Occasionally sidekicked with Munch (Richard Belzer - obit in the latest issue of FT - who trademarked one of the most recognisable oddball detectives of the 90's onwards).

Oddly, my memory has it that it was Crosetti who was the conspiracy obsessed one in that first couple of series (specifically, obsessed with the Lincoln assassination), rather than Munch. I wonder if the writers steered Belzer in that direction in this, his original manifestation of the character of Munch, to fill the gap after Crosetti's departure - and thereby planted the seeds of the legend.

Polito was a favourite of the Coen brothers too. Always a quality watch. Sadly died relatively young.
 
Jonathan Creek *sigh*

Have posted on here before and received general agreement that the first three series with Caroline Quentin as his sidekick were pretty good stuff but after that the plot lines became evermore more unlikely and 'forced' as time went on. Last night I watched the "Seer of the Sands' from Series 4 where a famous author gets drunk and crashes his speedboat, only for his body to then disappear. A gypsy women then appears and gives messages to his secret American lover. Later the gypsy is found burned to death in her caravan and Creek shows how it was also hoaxed and that his other woman had embalmed his body and was serving it tea on the lawn etc.

Imaginative, yes and quite a charming location. But where were the Police...? Where were Search and Rescue, combing the coastline for his body and the tracker dogs that would have looked for his body on shore (and possibly found it in the mad woman's house). Why weren't the nearest and dearest all marched down to the local Police station to take statements etc. As if the Police would just shrug and say 'Oh well, we'll take her word for it, doubt we'll find him then'. Where were the press? The guy was famous and disappeared without trace, the red tops would have been all over it.

Just bizarre that they seemed to all inhabit a part of Britain where you never see another living soul, never mind passing boats and where nobody ever informs the forces of law and order when drunk people crash boasts and gypsy women get roasted alive....
 
So it seems David Mitchell as Ludwig (BBC) has inherited the Jonathan Creek oddball accidental detective crown, episode 5 even had a locked room mystery.

The genius crossword setting but agoraphobic and single middle-aged identical twin brother of a detective assumes his identity when he goes missing yet no-one seems to notice despite his blatant incompetence and he solves crimes despite the police not bothering with niceties such as DNA, post mortems, teams of detectives scouring for evidence etc.

Let's be honest, the whole premise of Ludwig is nonsensical and if they had tried to play it 'straight' would have been truly awful but with a comedic twist and Mitchell in the lead role it works rather well and I'm enjoying it.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top