I have trouble understanding why some detectives made the jump to the silver screen and others didn’t.
Hercule Poirot, Lew Archer and Sam Spade (and his alter egos) are of course examples of successes.
Of my favorites who got (largely) left out, one at least makes some sense. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op had a couple strikes against him - he was short and fat (though tough) and worked for a detective agency instead of being a romantic loner. Still you’d think he’d make a good subject for a modern film.
Nero Wolfe had a TV run but no real movie career to my knowledge. I would have liked seeing him played by Sidney Greenstreet.
Matt Scudder should have been a natural. Instead we wind up with Nick Nolte in a version of “Eight Million Ways To Die” that bore virtually no resemblance to the novel or Lawrence Block’s detective (though it did set some sort of a record for the most swear words in a single sequence).
A “B” movie or two was made involving John McDonald’s Travis McGee or someone vaguely resembling him. Nothing at all memorable though. And I would enjoy seeing Pronzini’s Nameless Detective in a screen adaptation, pedantic moralist that he sometimes is.
Interesting topic, one I have wondered about from time to time. I would love to see Joe LeapHorn and Jim Chee portrayed on the screen in an adaption of any Tony Hillerman novel.
How about Orson Welles as Nero Wolfe, with Joseph Cotten as Archie?
I wonder if you could ever do a proper movie version of George Chesbro’s Mongo books? Peter Dinklage would be great – except that the stories involve physical demands that might be impossible.
Have there been any movies (or TV shows) based on C.G. Chesterfield’s Father Brown books? I’d like to see that. (I know there are Father Brown movies/shows out there, but they don’t seem to be the same Father Brown).
Unfortunately, neither seems to have ever been released to VHS or DVD. I guess the user reviews for both movies must be based on them being shown on cable at some point.
Man, I loved reading that series as a kid! I think several of those books would make excellent movies.
I am assuming you mean ones that were attempted either on the big or little screen but bombed. I immediately thought of V.I. Warcholsky (sp). The one movie done was with Kathleen Turner, who should have been perfect for it, but it was terrible.
I also thought of Hillerman’s Legendary Joe Leaphorn. It’s been attempted a number of times, but never pulled off.
I saw one movie with Nevile Shute’s Australian aboriginal detective Napolean Boneparte but it didn’t work either. There may have been others in Australian and they may have been successful there. I don’t know.
Years ago, I saw an attempt on television of Judge Dee. It didn’t really work either. As I remember the lead was played by a non-asian and they cut out most of the sex parts so much of the plot suffered.
No great productions of Christie’s Harley Quinn that I can remember either.
Interestingly enough, An Affair of Sorcerers is listed as being “in production”; which may mean nothing more than that someone has purchased the rights and has started looking into it. And they have Peter Dinklage signed up to play Monge. And I agree after seeing him in “Threshold” that he would be perfect to play Mongo.
The Napoleon Bonaparte detective series are by Arthur William Upfield. Nevil Shute is perhaps most famous for the novel On the Beach. (I had to look up both authors - something about Bonaparte & Shute just seemed wrong.)
