Gentleman detectives include amateurs, private detectives and professional policemen. They are always well educated, frequently have unusual or eccentric hobbies, and are commonly found in their natural environment, an English country house. This archetype of British detective contrasts with the more "hardboiled" counterpart in American crime fiction.
Poe created Dupin before the word detective had been coined, but began many common elements of detective fiction: Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective. He was "…the first fictional detective of importance and the model for virtually every cerebral crime solver who followed."[3] More specifically, Dorothy L. Sayers noted that "Sherlock Holmes modelled himself to a large extent upon (Poe's) Dupin, substituting cocaine for candlelight, with accompaniments of shag and fiddle-playing."[4]
Dupin is French, not English, but is probably a gentleman. He comes from a once wealthy family but has been reduced "by a variety of untoward events" to more humble circumstances. He is entirely amateur and contents himself only with the basic necessities of life.[5] He lives in Paris with his close friend, the anonymous narrator of the stories. Like the much later Lord Peter Wimsey (see below), Dupin is a bibliophile, and met his narrator friend while both were searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscure library.[6] For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics.[7] Dupin also bears the French title Chevalier,[2] meaning that he is a knight in the Légion d'honneur.
The classic British gentleman detective appears soon after Poe's Dupin. A gentleman amateur is the ultimate hero of The Moonstone (1868), a famous epistolary novel widely considered the first true detective novel in English. Its author, Wilkie Collins was a lawyer, and a close friend of Charles Dickens. Collins also used gifted amateurs in his earlier mystery novel, The Woman in White (1859).
In The Moonstone, Rachel Verinder is the only child of a rich, aristocratic widow. On her eighteenth birthday, she is bequeathed an enormous diamond; that night, this 'moonstone' is stolen from the country house of her mother, Lady Verinder. After local police are baffled, a Bow Street Runner called Sergeant Cuff is called in. Sergeant Cuff is honourable and skilful, but he is not a gentleman, and is unable to break Rachel's reticence about what is clearly an inside job.
The mystery is eventually solved by Franklin Blake, who is a gifted amateur—and definitely a member of the gentry. The social difference between Collins' two detectives is nicely shown by their relationships with the Verinder family: Sergeant Cuff becomes a great friend of Lady Verinder's steward (chief servant), whereas Franklin Blake eventually marries Rachel, her daughter.
Sherlock Holmes
The most famous of all fictional detectives, Sherlock Holmes, may also be considered a gentleman, at least by background. Holmes was the creation of Scottish author and physicianSir Arthur Conan Doyle. He appeared in four novels and fifty-six short stories, all but four stories narrated by his associate, the notable Dr Watson. These works cover in fiction a period from around 1878 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914. Both characters also appear in many pastiches.
Holmes is a brilliant London-based and self-styled consulting detective. In their debut (the 1887 novel, A Study in Scarlet), he tells Watson that this occupation is unique (which at that date it was). As a retired army doctor, Dr Watson is far closer to the stereotypic English gentleman than Holmes, yet has no social reservations about beginning his long association with the detective. In the best traditions of the gentry, Holmes proves to be physically brave, and competent with fists, sword and pistol. Like the earlier Dupin and the later Lord Peter Wimsey (see below), Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst (for instance, The Dancing Men, 1903).
Conan Doyle never gave much background about Holmes' family, but his hero was apparently born in 1854 (estimated from His Last Bow, 1917). He also has an eccentric older brother, Mycroft Holmes, a senior public servant and member of the Diogenes Club. As further indirect evidence that Holmes is an educated gentleman, Conan Doyle indicates that Holmes is fluent in Latin (A Study in Scarlet, 1887), and as the series continues his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, and even Goethe. Holmes had earlier attended university, where he began his detecting as an amateur (The Gloria Scott, 1893, and The Musgrave Ritual, 1893). A violinist himself, Holmes loves music (The Red-Headed League, 1890), sometimes to the point of eccentricity; in The Bruce-Partington Plans (1912), Watson reports that "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus."
Holmes and Watson were often depicted wearing traditional gentleman's attire in illustrations set in London by Sidney Paget, whose illustrations accompanied Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand Magazine. While Paget is credited with depicting Holmes wearing a deerstalker hat and Inverness cape, Paget only depicted Holmes wearing these garments in situations that would have been considered appropriate at the time, such as when Holmes was working in a rural setting or travelling to the countryside.[8]
Hercule Poirot first appeared in 1920, in Agatha Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He was immensely popular during the "Golden Age", becoming the most famous detective since Sherlock Holmes. He appeared in 33 novels, one play, and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era. Poirot was formerly Chief of Police of Brussels, until "the Great War" (WWI) forced him to leave for England. It was there that he met his longtime friend Arthur Hastings, who accompanied him on many cases. Throughout his career, he solved many cases across Europe, occasionally undertaking cases for the British government and Secret Service, including foiling the attempted abduction of the British Prime Minister. Poirot operates as a fairly conventional detective, depending on logic, which is represented by two common phrases he uses: his use of "the little grey cells" and "order and method". Poirot is occasionally assisted by his secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, and friend Chief Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard. Poirot's appearance is of a short, dignified man. His head is exactly the shape of an egg, with a stiff and military-like moustache. His attire consists of a three-piece suit, accompanied by a pocketwatch, spats, patent leather shoes and a pair of pince-nez. He also wears a "Tussie-mussie" lapel pin he received as a gift in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Lord Peter Wimsey was the creation of Dorothy L. Sayers. Wimsey is an archetype for British gentlemen detectives. Reputedly born in 1890, he first appeared in Whose Body? (1923), the first of 11 chronological novels and several collections of short stories. Wimsey is a purely amateur sleuth, and is unquestionably an English gentleman. He is polished, aristocratic, wealthy, and the younger brother of a duke. Wimsey is extremely clever, though he usually tries to hide it. As shown in Have His Carcase (1932), Wimsey is a competent cryptanalyst, like both the earlier Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. Again like Holmes, Wimsey is physically brave (despite being physically small), and is competent with his fists (Clouds of Witness, 1926). Wimsey is notably eccentric in manner; this is most evident in the first five novels. As Sayers' work progress and as Wimsey ages, he rounds out and mellows greatly. At age 45 he marries Harriet Vane, a crime writer. According to Barbara Reynolds, her friend and biographer,[9] Sayers remarked that Lord Peter began as a mixture of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. She claimed that she had developed the "husky voiced, dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony. Vane features in two further novels (Have His Carcase, 1932, & Gaudy Night, 1935) before agreeing to marry Wimsey. In the course of writing these novels, Sayers gave Lord Peter and Harriet so much life that she was never able to, as she put it, "see Lord Peter exit the stage." In an essay by one of her "Golden Age" rivals, Ngaio Marsh (see below), Sayers is accused of having "fallen in love" with Wimsey.[10]
Albert Campion first appeared in 1929, and was created by Margery Allingham as a parody of Lord Peter Wimsey.[11] Albert Campion is supposedly the pseudonym used by a man who was born in 1900 into a prominent British aristocratic family. He was educated at Totham School and the (fictitious) St. Ignatius' College, Cambridge (according to a mini-biography included in Sweet Danger, 1933). Ingenious, resourceful and well-educated, in his 20s he assumed the name Campion and began a life as an adventurer and detective. As Allingham's work progressed, Campion established his own identity. He first appeared as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), an adventure story involving a ring of criminals, and would go on to feature in another 17 novels and over 20 short stories.
Roderick Alleyn first appeared in 1934,[12] the creation of New Zealander, Ngaio Marsh, who was then living in London.[10] Alleyn featured in a chronological series of 32 detective novels, which finished as late as 1982. He was apparently born around 1893, schooled at Eton, graduated from Oxford around 1915, served in the army for three years in the First World War, then spent a year (1919-1920) in the British Foreign Service. He finally joined the Metropolitan Police as a constable in about 1920 or 1921. When the series opens,[12] Alleyn is aged about 40 and is already a Chief Detective-Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard. As the series progresses, Alleyn marries and has a son, and eventually rises to the rank of Chief Superintendent. Alleyn is a thoroughly professional policeman, but socially is very like Wimsey. Both were reputedly educated at Eton and Oxford (being only three or so years apart, they perhaps should have known each other). Both detectives eventually marry a former murder suspect and have children. As depicted by Marsh, Alleyn's family is similar to that created by Sayers for her Wimsey, in that Alleyn has a titled older brother, who however is much less grand (merely a baronet rather than a duke). Like Wimsey, Alleyn's titled brother is less intelligent and more conventional than his more famous younger sibling. Alleyn's mother, Lady Alleyn, closely resembles in manner Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver. Both ladies are affable, intelligent, and strongly support (and perhaps prefer) their younger sons. One marked difference between the fictional biographies of Alleyn and Wimsey, who are about the same age, is in their supposed military service during the First World War. Alleyn's army service is glossed over and never discussed, whereas Wimsey's distinguished service on the Western Front has mentally scarred him for life. Another difference is that Wimsey deliberately cultivates his aristocratic eccentricities (inter alia, he wears a monocle, delights in his Oxford accent, and collects incunabula), whereas Alleyn is not at all eccentric, and plays down his upper-class background.
Miss Marple is one of the two great detective creations of Agatha Christie, the best known of all the "Golden Age" writers. Miss Marple is an amiable elderly spinster who first appeared in 1927. Her detective feats are largely based on her profound knowledge of human nature, gained (she maintains) from closely observing life in her small village. The daughter of a clergyman, she is not from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home amongst them. Miss Marple would probably have been happy to describe herself as a gentlewoman. Christie had a rather upper-class background herself: she grew up in a large house with servants, with a father rich enough not to work, a private education, and many country house parties before World War 1.[13] In her autobiography, Christie stated that she partly based Miss Marple upon her grandmother and her friends.
Mr. Satterthwaite is one of Christie's lesser known amateur detectives. This charming, elderly gentleman only appears in The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930) and Three Act Tragedy (1934). He is physically small, highly cultivated, an inveterate snob with a taste for duchesses, and is wealthy besides. By way of contrast, Christie's most famous detective character (Hercule Poirot) is a foreigner, and is thus outside the English class system. Poirot takes full advantage of this subtlety, not least in Three Act Tragedy in which he catches a serial killer with Mr. Satterthwaite's assistance.
Arsène Lupin, the French "gentleman thief" who debuted in 1905, may just as well be considered a gentleman detective.
Modern examples
Several modern day fictional characters may be considered examples of gentlemen detectives. Like Alleyn but unlike earlier gifted amateurs such as Wimsey, Campion or Miss Marple, several modern "gentleman detectives" are professional policemen.
Adam Dalgliesh, the creation of P. D. James, first appeared in 1962. He flourishes in the Metropolitan Police, despite being definitely gentry where such a background may be a disadvantage. Like the earlier Miss Marple, Dalgliesh is the child of an Anglican clergyman. He is somewhat of a recluse and, more eccentrically, a successful poet.
Inspector Morse, the subject of works by Colin Dexter, first appeared in 1975. He works in Oxford and is (or was) upwardly mobile: he won a scholarship to Oxford but subsequently failed. Like Alleyn and Wimsey, Morse served in the British army before joining the police, but unlike them, he served not as a commissioned officer in a prestigious regiment but as a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Military Police. Morse's snobbery is intellectual rather than a question of breeding or social advantage.
Detective Inspector Lynley, first introduced in 1988, is another truly aristocratic member of the Police, being an Earl. Much of the plot of the novels by Elizabeth George revolve around his working relationship with Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, who is of lower-class origins. Both show greater loyalty to each other than to official regulations and accepted attitudes to their relative stations, and both are capable of self-sacrificing actions of noblesse oblige.
Carmen Isabella Sandiego, the "World's Greatest Thief", was first introduced in 1985. She was originally ACME Crimenet's most intelligent and distinguished lady detective with a flawless record in solved cases. She got so bored, she changed careers as a lady thief and became spymaster and CEO of V.I.L.E., all just for the challenge.
Professor Layton from the video game series named after him. He first appeared in 2007. He is a professor of archaeology who solves various puzzles with his young apprentice Luke Triton.
Goro Akechi from the Atlus video game series Persona. Akechi is known as the Detective Prince of Tokyo who seems to solve various crimes and is adored whenever he shows up on TV. In 5, he's referred to as the second coming of the detective prince, a reference to Naoto Shirogane from 4.
Detective Inspector Alexandra "Alex" Drake (née Price), the well-bred, posh protagonist of Ashes to Ashes (2007–2009, mentioned in Life on Mars in 2006).[14]DI Drake, the orphaned daughter of a solicitor and barrister, was reared from adolescence by her parents' associate after she witnessed their violent deaths and narrowly avoiding being killed with them. She attended good schools and studied psychology before joining the Metropolitan Police and fast-tracking up the ranks. A gunshot to her head in 2007 sends her back in time to 1981, three months before her parents' murders, and places her in the company of comparatively Neanderthal detectives who had transplanted themselves from the North a year earlier.
Benoit Blanc, a detective depicted in the film Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion, described by one of the film's characters as "The last of the gentlemen sleuths." He has a characteristic southern accent, and uses a unique technique of interpreting information he calls Gravity's Rainbow to solve crimes. Despite not being British, encompasses all the characteristics of the traditional gentleman detective.
Skulduggery Pleasant, a real gentleman detective and one of the main characters of the book series of the same name. He has an interesting look, considering that he is a skeleton, which he takes full advantage of. With his partner Valkyrie Cain and some magic, Skulduggery solves world-shattering crimes.
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays, and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Kogoro Akechi, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been described as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".
Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand writer.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Margery Louise Allingham was an English novelist from the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", and considered one of its four "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.
Inspector James Japp is a fictional character who appears in several of Agatha Christie's novels featuring Hercule Poirot.
Crime fiction is a typically 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century genre, dominated by British and American writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.
Le ChevalierC. Auguste Dupin is a fictional character created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", widely considered the first detective fiction story. He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).
James Anderson was a British author. He is best known for his books featuring Inspector Wilkins. Set in the 1930s, the action of the books takes place in a large fictional British estate, or stately home, belonging to George Henry Aylvin Saunders, the 12th Earl of Burford. The books are a humorous look at the Golden Age type of mystery, which feature whodunnits set during a house party, and contain joking references to Inspector Appleby, the detective created by Michael Innes, or Inspector Alleyn, created by Ngaio Marsh, and to the well-known private detective Hercule Poirot, invented by Agatha Christie.
A Catalogue of Crime is a critique of crime fiction by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, first published in 1971. The book was awarded a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1972. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1989. Barzun and Taylor both graduated in the class of 1924 from Harrisburg Technical High School.
Death at the Bar is a crime novel by Ngaio Marsh, the ninth to feature her series detective Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard and published in 1940 by Collins (UK) and Little, Brown (USA).
Artists in Crime is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the sixth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1938. The plot concerns the murder of an artists' model; Alleyn's love interest Agatha Troy is introduced.
Overture to Death is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the eighth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1939. The plot concerns a murder during an amateur theatrical performance in a Dorset village, which Alleyn and his colleague Fox are dispatched from Scotland Yard to investigate and duly solve.
In Agatha Christie's mystery novels, several characters cross over different sagas, creating a fictional universe in which most of her stories are set. This article has one table to summarize the novels with characters who occur in other Christie novels; the table is titled Crossovers by Christie. There is brief mention of characters crossing over in adaptations of the novels. Her publications, both novels and short stories, are then listed by main detective, in order of publication. Some stories or novels authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie, using the characters she created, and written long after Agatha Christie died, are included in the lists.
Hercule Poirot is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels and short stories adapted by Michael Bakewell, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1985 and 2007. With the exception of the first two adaptations, the series stars John Moffatt as Poirot.
↑ C. Steinbrunner & O. Penzler (editors-in-chief). Encyclopedia of mystery and detection, 1976. New York: Prentice-Hall: p137
↑ Dorothy L. Sayers (1929). Introduction (edited) to The omnibus of crime in Robin W. Winks (editor) (1980). Detective fiction: a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall: p58
↑ Stashower, Daniel. The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: PenguinBooks, 2006: 20. ISBN0-525-94981-X
↑ Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926: 108.
↑ Rosenheim, Shawn James. The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997: 21. ISBN978-0-8018-5332-6
↑ Barbara Reynolds (1993). Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul. London: Hodder and Stoughton. p.361.
1 2 Marsh, Ngaio (1995). Greene, Douglas G. (ed.). Alleyn and others: the collected short fiction of Ngaio Marsh. International Polygonics. ISBN1-55882-028-0. (hardcover 1989, edition), ISBN978-1-55882-050-0.
↑ Awake in 2008, Sam Tyler records his notes onto micro-cassettes and asks a subordinate to post a tape to Psychological Services Branch. He explains that an officer there is studying colleagues like him who have undergone traumatic events, and that talking to her has been very cathartic to him. His transcribed notes are read by Alex's daughter Molly over the opening credits of Ashes to Ashes, whereupon Alex and Molly briefly discuss the books that Alex is writing about psychologically traumatised police officers in general, and Sam Tyler in particular.
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