…and the local police are baffled. Then another body turns up in similar circumstances. Then another. Fortunately I have a Defictionalisatron 4000™ which will allow you to bring one fictional detective/crime solver - from TV, film or book, into reality to solve the grisly mystery. Who do you bring to life to catch the killer before they strike again?
Bear in mind that the Defictionarisationtronasier 4000™ doesn’t account for time or technology displacement, so if you bring Sherlock Holmes to solve the crime he’ll have to catch up on modern life, whereas Columbo wouldn’t have as much adjustment to do. Likewise the CSI people would be annoyed that our computers aren’t as advanced.
Depends on where it happened. If the body is found in a charming small New England town, I want Jessica Fletcher. A bunch of rich Californians, give me Columbo. If everything is in black and white and the suspects wear tuxedos and gowns, I’ll take Nick and/or Nora Charles.
…And the OP lets out all of the ones who did their best work when playing off against their sidekicks, and certainly all of the crime-fighting teams. No CSI team(s), no NCIS team(s), no Law & Order team(s), et cetera. Nero Wolfe is disqualified, pretty much. Poirot is mostly disqualified. Sherlock Holmes without Watson? …well, maybe.
Miss Marple? Any of the current British detectives?
Columbo only works because he knows the criminal beforehand. Note that in all episodes, the audience knew the killer first; without that knowledge, it would just look like Colombo was picking on some random person and harassing them. He was superb at tripping up a suspect into revealing himself, but had no track record for finding an unknown subject.
Jesus.
Hey, he might suck as a detective, but he could simply resurrect the victims to get splendid eyewitness testimony. You know he’d help with their lifelong therapy, too.
Or you could go with Dexter, I guess. He’s good at finding serial killers.
And do I really care if the murder gets solved; was the victim a friend of mine or something? I might get Nick Charles just to go out drinking with. Or Jim Rockford to go fishing with, and because he’d know where to get the best tacos for breakfast.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the TV series Pushing Daisies (ran for two seasons a couple of years back), but this is basically the premise. The hero isn’t Jesus though, he’s an otherwise ordinary guy who has the power to resurrect the dead. There are consequences if he brings them back for more than 60 seconds though, so he and his private detective partner normally just ask them quickly what they remember about being killed and use this information to solve the murder.