Who’s Your Favorite Detective?

For me, the answer to that question very much depends on what kind of a day it’s been for me. Yesterday, for instance, we had the plumber here for three hours (after he stood us up, two days in a row) and then the crown fell off one of my teeth. In one day, a couple weeks’ earnings went up in smoke.

To relax, that night we watched (on youtube, at no charge) an episode of Detective Inspector Banks. Somehow this failed to take my mind off my troubles. In this story, a high police official is blackmailed into feeding confidential police information to a gangster, and winds up committing suicide. Meanwhile his wife accidentally murders their beloved daughter… and so on. You get the picture.

So for reading in bed I turned to Freddy and the Ignormus, by Walter R. Brooks, in which Freddy the Pig (not a nickname–he really is a pig) comes up against one of the most puzzling cases of his whole detective career.

Under the circumstances, Freddy was my favorite detective.

At other times it’s Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or Australia’s Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. I also wish there were more George Gently episodes, but the new ones aren’t finished yet.

Which fictional detective floats your boat?

As to the reasons for liking or not liking detective stories in general… well, I’ll have to get into that another time. Maybe after I’ve seen the dentist.

PS–I know if I link to “Napoleon Bonaparte,” it’ll just take you to that little guy from Corsica. So try Bony’s creator, Arthur Upfield, instead.