Some of them are 180 years old, some arrived last decade, and they solve nothing the same way. Pick the one you would actually hand a case to.
1Hercule PoirotAgatha Christie's fastidious Belgian detective, star of 33 novels and the little grey cells.
2Miss MarpleChristie's elderly St Mary Mead spinster who solves murders by village analogy.
3Sherlock HolmesArthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective of 221B Baker Street, the template for the genre.
4Philip MarloweRaymond Chandler's Los Angeles private eye, the voice of American noir.
5Sam SpadeDashiell Hammett's San Francisco private detective from The Maltese Falcon.
6ColumboThe rumpled LAPD lieutenant whose 'just one more thing' undoes every confident killer.
7Lord Peter WimseyDorothy L. Sayers' aristocratic amateur sleuth of the 1920s and 30s.
8Jules MaigretGeorges Simenon's pipe-smoking Paris commissaire, hero of 75 novels.
9Father BrownG.K. Chesterton's unassuming Catholic priest who reads sin rather than clues.
10Nancy DrewThe teenage sleuth of River Heights who introduced generations of readers to mysteries.
11Inspector MorseColin Dexter's crossword-solving, opera-loving Oxford detective.
12Harry BoschMichael Connelly's LAPD homicide detective, working cases nobody else will.
13Benoit BlancRian Johnson's Southern-accented private detective from the Knives Out films.
14Sam VimesTerry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork City Watch commander, a detective in a fantasy city.
15Kurt WallanderHenning Mankell's melancholy Swedish inspector from Ystad.
16DupinEdgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, the first detective in fiction, from 1841.
17Veronica MarsThe teenage private investigator of Neptune, California, working her father's cases.
Comments 1
Poirot and Miss Marple are both on this list of seventeen, and no other writer here has more than one entry: https://youpick.best/articles/agatha-christie-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamAug 21
