Marty Michaels

After the top twenty movie cops, I figured I’d give you nice people a list of my top ten fictional detectives. Anyone who knows me will be able to predict the number one spot, but let’s see who he beat to get there. Onward!

10. C. AUGUSTE DUPIN

It’s only fitting that the first supersleuth on our list should be the first… well, ever. Created by Edgar Allen Poe in 1841, Dupin made his first apperance in Murders in the Rue Mourge – widely considered to be the first detective story. Dupin was never explicitly called a “detective,” mostly because the word itself hadn’t been coined yet, and his methods seem to be almost supernatural. Sherlock Holmes, the man known as the Great Detective, was never much of a fan of Dupin, calling him “a very inferior fellow,” but nonetheless, if not for Dupin, Holmes would never have existed.

9. BULLDOG DRUMMOND

From the first fictional detective, to the first “hard boiled” noir-style detective and the proto-Bond, Bulldog Drummond. Created in 1920, Drummond was an ex-army officer wo spent his time solving crimes, shooting badguys and generally being a bit of a jingoistic twat. The novels have come under fire of late for their casual racism (“Every beard is not false, but every nigger smells” being just one example) but their influence on the detective genre cannot be overstated. Without Drummond and his happy band of xenophobic cohorts, we’d never have had Doc Savage, Sam Spade or any of the other pulp/noir characters that followed.

8. PERRY MASON

Strictly speaking, Perry Mason is a lawyer not a detective, but his methods are far more like a detective’s than a lawyer’s. Proving his client’s innocence by proving the guilt of another party, Mason was created as a literary character by Earl Stanley Gardner, but is perhaps most famous as a TV character played by Raymond “Godzilla” Burr. Mason was able to solve many cases before even coming before the court, being able to establish the guilty party by examining preliminary evidence.

7. MIKE HAMMER

Speaking of pulp characters, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer makes his apperance on the list at number eight. Brutally violent, beligerient and mysoginistic and with the attitide that the law gets in the way when it comes to justice, Hammer nonetheless holds policemen in high regard (unlike most fictional detectives.) The violence in the Hammer novels is still quite shocking – henchmen and thugs are often left throwing up after Hammer knees them between the legs, for example. Nice. Interestingly, in the movie version of The Girl Hunters, Spillane himself played Hammer, making him the only author I can think of to have played his own creation onscreen.

6. PHILLIP MARLOWE

Created by the great Raymond Chandler in the novel The Big Sleep (1939) Phillip Marlowe is a two fisted, wisecracking, tough guy who smokes too much, drinks too much but, unlike other pulp gumshoes, is immune to the charms of the various femme fatales who knock on his office door. Underneath his hard boiled exterior, Marlowe is a contemplative sort who enjoys chess and poetry, but the minute he steps out onto the mean streets of 1940s L.A., the crumpled fedora goes on and the tough guy exterior comes up.

5. BATMAN

Well, he’s not known as the “Dark Knight Detective” for nothing. Batman is, accroding to DC comics, the “world’s greatest detective” and he’s certainly the most hands-on charatcer on the list when it comes to detective work. After all, why sneak past guards when you can knock them out with a Batarang? Sadly, in recent years, the “detective” part of “the Dark Knight Detective” has been all but forgotten in comics and movies, but Before Robin, before Batgirl, before Tim Burton Joel Schmaker and Cristopher Nolan, those early Bob Kane/Bill Finger years where Batman was a noir detective in long underwear were glorious.

4. DICK TRACY

I’ve written before about Dick Tracy on this blog, but he’s such a great character and such an obvious influence on so many others that I can’t help but lace him high on this list. The first ever police procedural character, Dick Tracy one of only two detectives on this list to carry a police badge (making him eligible for yet another list…) rather than being a private detective, but we won’t hold that against him. Staunchly conservative in his views on law enforcement, Tracy would no doubt be appauled by a guy like Mike Hammer’s disregard for the law and that’s why he’s number four on our list. As cool as a Dirty Harry type can be, it’s nice to know there are still at least a few honest cops left.

3. COLUMBO

Everything about Columbo screams “iconic” – from the grubby trenchcoat and chewed up stogie to the ’59 Peugeot 403 and the glass eye, Peter Falk’s performance as Lt. Frank Columbo in the TV series Columbo is one of those rare examples of a character and an actor being so utterly perfect for each other that it’s impossible to think of one without thinking of the other. Like Sherlock Holmes or Auguste Dupin, Columbo’s methods are almost as famous as the man himself, allowing the guilty party to think they’ve gotten away with it until the last possible second when Columbo makes the shift from scruffy little idiot to predatory great white insisting on asking “just one more thing.” Brilliant.

2. SAM SPADE

“When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it.” Dashiel Hammet’s immortal creator Sam Spade is the quintissential noir detective. Played by Humphrey Bogart in the classic 1941 movie The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade is a man who has seen the worst life has to offer and lives only to see his particular form of justice done. Coldy detatched and cool to the point of freezing, Spade represents the classic image of the forties private eye in his double breasted suit, trenchcoat and fedora.

1. SHERLOCK HOLMES

Why is Sherlock Holmes the greatest fictional detective of all time? Why, it’s elementary. Cold, detatched, arrogant, smoking like a chimney, addicted to cocaine, possesed of a cat-like neatness and entirley asexual, Sherlock Holmes seems on paper like the kind of guy that you’d avoid like the plague, but somehow his towering intellect and extraordinary powers of deduction and perception make him perhaps the single most interesting character in all of fiction. Created by Arthur Conan Doyle in the eighteen-eighties and perfected by Jeremy Brett in the nineteen-eighties, Holmes is the detective that every sleuth, gumshoe and private dick since owes his very existence to. Holmes is considered by many to be a stuffy old guy in a deerstalker, but these people don’t realise that the truth couldn’t be further from that image. The Holmes of the original stories is a master of not only deduction but also disguise, fencing, baritsu, boxing, singlestick, bare knuckle fighting and chemistry, is able to tell at a glance the different between hundreds of different types of tobacco and soils and is an expert in sensational literature and British law. Not bad for a stuffy old guy in a deerstalker.

There you go, the top ten fictional detectives. Like I said in the intro, the number one spot was a forgone conclusion, but nevermind. As always, comment below. End transmission.

Tags: detective, fictional, top ten