Every detective, policeman (heck every person) on “Fortitude”. Watch the show and you’ll know what I mean.
(All the detectives I used to read were Poirot, Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes. The first 2 were pretty happy and full of themselves. SH too though there was that cocaine habit…)
Vincent D’Onofrio on Law and Order: CI was a lonely mess. Mulder of the X-Files too.
SVU Detectives Finn and Munch are both miserable, and seem to feed off each other’s misery.
It makes for some great comedy.
Chief Inspector Dreyfus, except when he thought Clouseau was dead.
That is a great scene, although as noted, it was Sue. Also, while Butters was a fan of oompa music, that’s not what he played on the dinosaur. He was simulating the heartbeat of the dinosaur. An oompa rhythm might have produced some really interesting results:D.
In terms of detectives who have “seen some shit…”, I’ll nominate Charlie Parker from the novels by John Connolly. He’s right up there with Harry Dresden.
I’m a huge fan of Harry Dresden, and he does have a great circle of friends and relatives, but I disagree that he’s not fundamentally unhappy.
He has:
Killed his lover and the mother of his child.
He rarely gets to see that child.
He and Murphy lust after each other, but can never get together.
He has witnessed a good man (Shiro) choose to die for Harry’s sake. That’s gotta lay a huge burden on him.
He has witnessed a good friend be crippled and almost killed as a result of his (Harry’s) decisions. Again, a huge burden.
He has seen Molly Carpenter be unwittingly tricked into becoming the Winter Lady. (I’m curious how that affects his relationship with Michael and Charity. Don’t know if Butcher plans on addressing that.)
He has seen numerous innocent people die horrible deaths which he couldn’t prevent. And he takes this very personally.
The lover he thought he had found turned out to be under the influence of mind control, which caused her to think she loved him.
While Harry has done some amazing things, and I’m sure has more in his future, I don’t see how he can be happy as a base state. Certainly he is capable of being happy in the moment.
Interestingly, I was just rereading Proven Guilty and I was struck by this:
"Sometimes I get tired of being the guy who is supposed to deal with un-deal-with-able situations."
what irritates me is when an author lets a character be happy for 50 or so pages and then goes out of their way to do something to make them miserable again
I forget the book but it was a female detective that lived in wither Colorado or Tahoe who wasn’t that happy of a person had the usual failed marriage bunch of relationships ect drank a lot was always broke ect
Well the one that got away came back into town and they get married … and her asshole psycho client kills the husband because she couldn’t give him what he wanted (evidence he was ripped off so he could take the ski resort from his family because they kicked him out after he broke his sisters leg by sabotaging her skis so she couldn’t go to the olympics ) and she finds out hes evil and hes mentally ill enough to be "well if im not happy no one is " the first 5 and last 5 chapters is a normal detective story its the middle 3 or 4 the relationship happens …. drove me nuts …….
didn’t monk himself on several occasions say " im never happy " in the first 3 or 4 seasons ?
But does that make him more miserable than all the other fictional detectives?
I think having a disorder that affects every aspect of your life would be pretty hard to deal with. Somebody without that type of illness can try to come to terms with whatever has come their way in life.
…forever remaining the same age, never to know the satisfaction of making a life for themselves, or the joys of romantic attachment and conjugal love…
Those poor Bobbsey Twins.
Burton Guster, from Psych. Shawn is always dragging him into cases against his will, constantly belittles him by purposely getting his name wrong, uses him for his company car and he hardly ever gets the girl. The man just wants to be the best pharmaceutical salesman he can be. It’s not fair, damn it.
Yeah but he drove a great car and had a popular theme song, so I’ll take it.
The Gary Busey character in the Tom Cruise movie, The Firm — he eeked out a pretty miserable existence.
But he’s cool, and talented (did you see him tap-dancing). He’s got it going on, does Gus.
Harry Angel. At the end of the movie, at least.
Is anyone really happy *all *of the time? That’s a pretty high standard to meet.
Regardless, Harry may have taken some blows, but he’s a fighter, and they haven’t broken him yet. Nobody rolls with the punches like Harry Dresden; his fundamental good cheer and irreverence is part of makes him such a great character.
A lot of Harrys in this thread.
I’ll second Harry Hole. The first two books in the series can be safely skipped but the rest of it is great stuff. There is a dark humor at work that offsets the self-loathing and binge drinking.
That nails Bosch perfectly. Harry doesn’t really fit in this thread, though. When he has a murder to work, nothing else matters. He isn’t happy exactly, but everything is safely tucked away when he’s on the hunt. Retirement is a very bad thing for Bosch.
One of his bad guys says to his face “Retired and relentless is a bad combination.”
Is that from a novel or the Amazon show? I know it’s Connelly either way, just curious.
That’s because no one ever thanks him later.