The “cozy” style of mystery positively thrives on intellectual detectives who love learning and books. Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn, Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury & Melrose Plant, Ellery Queen’s uh Ellery Queen, and Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael are all pretty hooked on the pursuit of knowledge (or at least trivia). P.D. James’s Inspector Dalgliesh was a freakin’ poet. Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion adored books as well, although he feigned being a whimsical, ignorant ass as part of his masquerade. So did Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen, although the “whimsical ass” thing wasn’t always feigned.
And God knows Dorothy Sayers’s Peter Wimsey and his dull-ass girlfriend Harriet Vane were intellectual and nauseatingly proud of it, with their Greek-quoting and epigram-spouting ways. (Sorry, I hate Sayers.)
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**Lamia**
How about Agatha Christie's Inspector Poirot? He solves most of his cases by using his "little grey cells", as he puts it.
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First of all, Poirot is not an Inspector, he is a private eye. (He may have been a police detective when he was a young man in Belgium, but none of the stories deal with that part of his life.)
Apart from that, I do not think Poirot meets the OP's criteria. Yes, he is supposedly very intelligent, and uses that intelligence to solve his cases, but there is no evidence, so far as I am aware, of any particular interest in stereotypically intellectual matters.
I would like to nominate Jeeves, who reads Spinoza for pleasure, and is clearly very well read in general.
Also, P.D. James’ detective hero, Adam Dalgliesh, who has published several volumes of poetry.
I am a bit surprised that no-one has yet mentioned Indiana Jones (although perhaps the only real evidence for his intellectuality is that he is an archaeology professor).
As to Poirot, I don’t see anything intellectual about an interest in gardening, and puzzle solving is, in my opinion, almost anti-intellectual. It is a way of playing with your intelligence without actually engaging with ideas. Writing literary criticism probably does qualify him as an intellectual though. I did not know about that.
Wimsey and Vane are just showing of their upperclass educations, I think (and the fact that, unlike most of their class, they are not so dumb that they have forgotten it all). They are meant to be clever and very upper class and snobbish, and all the quotations show that off. I am not convinced that it amounts to (or is even intended to amount to) intellectuality, however.
Again, there are all sorts of TV, movie and literary characters who are SUPPOSEd to be intellectuals, but don’t come across as very bright- probably because the writers know little or nothing about the subjects their characters are SUPPOSED to be experts in.
Ross on “Friends” is supposed to hold a Ph. D in Palentology. Did he EVER seem even brighter than average, let alone cerebral? His dissertation probably read, “The brontosaurus was thin at each end and thick in the middle.”
Charlie Eppes, crime-solver extraordinaire on “Numb3rs,” is supposed to be a world-class mathematician… but while I’m NOT a mathematician, I know just enough math to understand how bad a lot of his reasoning frequently is.
I think you could make an argument for Captain Olimar.
We know from the second game that he is a scientist, at least to some extent, because he’s the one writing the Piklopedia, which is very much a scientific act. And his other notes indicate that he is interested in studying the flora and fauna (and the in-between) of the Distant Planet simply to learn, and not to conquer or become rich. Note that he only went back in order to collect Louie, and the President and the Ship were the ones talking about money.
His interest isn’t merely gardening though, it’s selectively breeding improved vegetables. That’s a bit more intellectual than just puttering around in the garden.
I think this is the real problem. It is very hard to write ‘intellectual dialogue’ that sounds like actuals ‘intellectuals’ talking. I am frequently gobsmacked by movie and TV portrayals of college (or of intelligent people in general!) by how phony and wrong they come across. Insane Walter Bishop on ‘Fringe’ is the most authentic intellectual I’ve seen on TV in years!
OTOH, I disagree that puzzle-solving is ‘anti-intellectual’ or doesn’t involve engaging with ideas. It’s awfully hard to make it work on screen, or even in a book, though. Inspector Morse was a puzzle-solver, both police work-wise, and for a pastime, and a pretty decent ‘intellectual’, despite his failed degree. Dalgleish gets there too (though I find the books boring). Dorothy Sayers was certainly an intellectual, but I think Harriet Vane comes across pretty badly. I can’t say for sure, as I loathe the series for other reasons.
And when you do manage to pull it off, you get something ubertalky like Mindwalk – a fine thing of its kind, but not the kind of thing to appeal to the non-intellectual majority, and with no character that can fairly be called a “hero.”
An intellectual isn’t just an advanced degree holder or someone who has gone far down a very specialized learning path; he (or she) is someone who is familiar with ideas in a number of disciplines in addition to his own, someone who is cultured , conversant in many arts and sciences. That’s not Ross or Charlie.
In popular culture, think of Andre in My Dinner with Andre.
One of my literary heroes, George Smiley, definitely qualifies. He’s into researching medieval German literature, and probably would have wound up doing so had he not been drawn into the Circus. He never quite gives up his love for German lit, either.
