That said, who needs Nero to leave the house?
Archie’s pretty much been in the situation laid out in the first post: a rich eccentric gets offed at her country estate, with suspicious hangers-on and well-connected relatives in abundance – and our hero phones Wolfe, who immediately deduces the killer’s identity and could prove it with a few well-placed words.
But since the above is the plot that kicks off In The Best Families . . .
-EXCEEDINGLY MINOR SPOILERS-
. . . our heroes first spend two hundred pages wrapping up some preexisting bits of business: Nero gathers enough evidence for thirty federal counts against a mobster sure as Archie gets nine offers to come and work for the FBI, and a girl unjustly accused of industrial espionage gets cleared along the way, plus a hit-and-run driver gets what’s coming to him, and there’s a jewel heist that gets cracked and a crooked bookie who gets found, but we keep returning to the main case until we’re finally at the last five pages of the book and Wolfe patiently explains what he’s known since that call on the night of the murder.
Adrian Monk does it once in a while, but it’s Nero Wolfe’s strong suit.
Henry and Dupin would solve the case immediately, but would not be in any rush to tell anybody unless asked.
In the meantime, the detectives searching for clues (including Holmes and Batman) are at a disadvantage because the intuitive detectives will already have solved it while they search.
Of the intuitive detectives, Columbo will hang around the culprit but not quite be ready to accuse him.
So who solves it first? My money is on Father Brown.
I’d go with Toby what’s-his-name, the telepathic paramedic who solves crimes and missing person’s cases in the new (and almost certainly doomed to be axed) drama The Listener. The dude has no formal training in law enforcement, but his ability to read people’s thoughts gives him an infallible access to secret truths.
Plus, he’s cute as the dickens. 
I think you’d have to give it to old Hercule, when he’s already solved this case not once but three times, first as The Mysterious Affair at Styles and once as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd before it was a Christmas Murder. Just take a gander at the list of characters.
Christie is the most responsible for the country house conventions calcifying into cliches. Holmes went out to the sticks on occassion, but he also bounced around lLondon eft right and center, disguising himself as a Chinese opium-den operator here, lollgagging as a longshoreman there, hobnobbing with the toffs at the Minstry of Defense the other way. Marlowe and Nick and Nora are a reaction to and a rejection of the staid ol’ tweedy drawing murders of La Dame; the rest are either twists and riffs on her or varieties of superhero, which is another whole ball 'o wax. It’s like asking who you’d call for your world-saving needs, given all of DC and Marvel to choose from; in the end you have to go with Supes because he’s the Ur.
For a country house mystery, Hercule’s the one.
Unlike his grandson (as so ably assisted by Watson’s grandson) in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It, which also covers this same scenario - although the denouement is somewhat unsatisfactory for all concerned … aside from Moriarty’s descendant.
I think you need to call in Kinky Friedman.
I think it would be the unmentioned Pee-Wee Herman from his Playhouse down the road because…
He would make a wish to Jambi to know who did it and Jambi would tell him! Gotta love Genies!
If there’s someone who knows the truth but needs a beating to get it out, Mike Hammer’s the guy.
Lucas Davenport… AND he’d kill the killer.
being an Asimov fan, my vote would go to Henry
Who solved the crime? everybody knows the butler did it.
If you have never read “tales of the black widowers” that joke just isn’t funny.
Proceeding from the assumption that this takes place in the UK, I’ll put my money on either Inspector Morse or Adam Dalgliesh, since either one could have jurisdiction and kick the rest of them to the curb.
But if it gets to trial, Horace Rumpole will get the butler (whose name is Timmons) acquitted and point the finger of guilt at the real killer.
Go three investigators!
We all know that House would stop by to use the bathroom on his way to a Jazz concert with Wilson. He’d peek into the room, lift the blanket over the body and explain that the deceased had died from Acute Onset Skin Failure. Natural causes.
Why is Batman even considered a detective? He has the same half dozen opponents almost every time, and they’re always wearing clown suits and broadcasting threats to destroy the city. You hardly need great deductive powers to figure out Gotham’s criminals.
There’s only one rabbit that could’ve pulled it off anyway, and it’s long dead by now. I hope.
Sherlock Holmes personally, and by extension Bobby Goren. Most brilliant and quirky for sure.
and sleep with the daughter!
