Who's the best genre detective?

Cafe Society
1

The rich, reclusive & cantankerous octogenarian gathers his nearest acquaintances & kin to his country estate. All the regular stock characters are there: the embittered, estranged first wife, the young, nubile golddigger second wife, the ne’er-do-well black sheep son, the loyal (ass-kissing) second son, the fiesty, rebellious daughter, the devious butler, the flighty maid, the long-serving personal secretary, etc., etc.

After a dinner party in which numerous awkward secrets are inadvertently revealed, the rich octogenarian gathers them all into his parlor and scathingly berates each & every last one of them, and then announces he’s re-writing his will to exclude them all. Then he tosses them all out of the study, locks the door behind him (with the only key) and proceeds to sulk in silence. Of course, the next morning - after a prolonged silence - the study doors get broken through and the assembled guests discover the body of the octogenarian - shot through the heart.

The local police are a bunch of boobs of course, and quickly stumped by the mystery. “I heard that a famed sleuth is staying at the inn down the road a bit. Perhaps we should ask for his assistance?” pipes in one voice. Someone is dispatched.

But the inn down the road was actually hosting a ‘famous sleuths’ convention, so that rather than one eccentric, unassuming detective, we get Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sam Spade, Nick & Nora Charles, Mike Hammer, Roderick Alleyn, Charlie Chan, Perry Mason, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Scooby Doo gang, the assembled casts of “Charlie’s Angels”, “Law & Order” and “CSI”, the Batman, Columbo, and George & Weezy Jefferson (George, as mentioned many times in CS threads, had an avid devotion to murder mysteries in one single episode).

So, who’s the first one to crack the case? (And how do they manage to get one-up on the competition?)

2

I’m not arguing that he didn’t have a keen and insightful mind with a magnificent bent for detective work, but to be clear: Perry Mason was an attorney, not a detective. His pet p.i. was Paul Drake.

And the answer to your question is the Batman. He has the mental acuity plus resources none of the rest can bring to the party.

3

There actually was a Batman story based on this premise. Batman admitted failure.*

I’d vote for the Old Man in the Corner, since he wouldn’t need to investigate anything. Just tell him the facts and he’d come up with the solution right from his chair.

*Actually, he discovered the solution, but said he could not because it was the wish of the person murdered – who had discovered Batman’s identity years before but never revealed it.

4

Assuming that Sherlock Holmes still has all his faculties (being that he is still alive in the age of Perry Mason - not to mention the Scooby Doo gang :D), I’d go with Holmes. No clue would go undiscovered and all evidence would be correctly assimilated and analyzed.

5

I prefer Elmore Leonard’s imperfect protagonists, and assume that folks like Sherlock Holmes (or Batman!) would have a lock on cracking cases first, but I have always enjoyed **Dashiell Hammett’s Continential Op **- stocky, block-headed dude who gets things done by sheer shoe leather and stubbornness…

6

More like real-life then? :smiley:

7

I’m not sure I’d venture a confident guess on this one, but I would just like to express astonishment, indignation, and irrational annoyance at the fact that C. Auguste Dupin is inexplicably absent from your list.

8

Where’s Philip Marlowe???

9

Sgt. Beef wins. At least he did in the wonderful, if totally forgotten, Case for Three Detectives in 1936.

Leo Bruce wrote it as a spoof of the leading detectives of the day. A locked room murder is committed and “Lord Simon Plimsoll,” “Monsieur Amer Picon,” and “Monsignor Smith” are there to solve the crime, each using his famed methods.

All are wrong, and the plain, ordinary, local constable that they scorn as an idiot solves the mystery using good ol’ common sense.

Amazingly, it was Bruce’s first mystery. He went on to a long career in Britain but never really caught on in America.

This also answers the question of “who cracks the case?” Whoever the writer wants, of course. :slight_smile:

10

Lionel Twain!

11

Arrrgh…I was just about to mention that Youtube has Murder By Death up in roughly ten minute segments. It has a scenario somewhat like the OP describes, in which five famous literary detectives are brought together to solve a murder at the country manor of wealthy genius Lionel Twain. Great cast and a very funny movie.

12

For this crime, I would go with Sherlock Holmes.

13

You’re forgetting Adam Dalgliesh and Reginald Wexford!

14

Holmes, the Old Man In The Corner (whom I suspect of being none other than Professor Moriarity himself), or Batman.

Those three stand out from the pack.

15

Hercule Poirot, of course.
This was one of his mysteries, although I think the nasty old guy was stabbed. It took place at Christmas, IMS. I’m sorry I can’t recall the title.

16

Me too. It involves the study of the personalities and motives of the people. He would solve it without having to visit the scene.

17

I need to add that if it’s a true locked room mystery, then Gideon Fell is the man. He - and Sir Henry Merrivale - were the two main series detectives of John Dickson Carr. Carr is the all-time premier writer of locked room and impossible crime mysteries. He did a couple of dozen novels with them, far more than anybody else of note. (Not to mention a bunch of short stories.) Every classic mystery fan has to read “The Locked Room Lecture” that’s the heart of his best puzzle, The Three Coffins. He’s also more or less forgotten these days, mainly because no movie was ever made from these books. But if you’re looking for the locked room champ, then at novel-length there’s no contender.

There’s one in short stories, though. Ed Hoch wrote 1000 detective short stories in his awesome career. About 75 of them featured Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a small-town Connecticut doctor whose every story concerned a locked room murder. Why anybody would live in a town that averaged 2.5 locked-room murders a year for three decades in a mystery in itself. Two collections of Hawthorne’s stories have been published. They’re easy to read and fun, if a bit repetitive. What’s especially nice about them is that they are chronological, in “real” time, so you get Hawthorne’s life and the town progressing over the years. This gives them a bit more depth than many short story collections, although Hoch is mostly an “idea” writer.

18

Another vote for Sherlock Holmes, but only because Nero Wolfe would have never left his house for a famous sleuth’s convention. Famous chefs, yes. An orchid show, yes. But mere detectives? No way.

19

No Alan Grant, I see. I still say Poirot, but Holmes could have done it, too.

20

I’ll go with Columbo. In every episode I’ve ever watched, Columbo has known instinctively who the guilty party is,

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[excuse me, just one more thing]

although he does take his plodding good time in finding enough evidence to support his conclusion.