Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-Hawaiian detective created by Earl Derr Biggers. He is the hero of a number of books and dozens of movies. At first a sergeant (but later promoted) in the Honolulu Police Department, he and his wife have eleven children and live in a house on Punchbowl Hill. He is a large man but moves gracefully.

Hercule Poirot (pronounced Air-kyool Pwa-roe) is a fictional character, the primary detective of Agatha Christie's novels who appears in over 30 books. The character was born in Belgium, and has worked as a Belgian police officer, but moved to England after World War I and started a second career as a private detective. Poirot is remarkable for his small stature and egg-shaped head, his meticulous moustache, his dandified dressing habits, his absolute obsession with neatness, and his disdain for detective methods that include crawling on hands and knees and looking for clues. He prefers to examine the psychology of a crime, once even betting his best friend and sometime partner, Arthur Hastings, that he could solve a case simply by sitting in an easy chair and using his "little grey cells."

Like a large number of detectives of the early days of mystery fiction (including Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown), Poirot is an unmarried, presumably celibate individual.

Philip Marlowe is a fictional private eye created by Raymond Chandler in a series of detective novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe's character is typical of a genre of hardboiled crime fiction that originated with Dashiell Hammett and Black Mask magazine in the 1920s where the private eye is a pessimistic and cynical observer of a corrupt society. Yet the enduring appeal of Marlowe and other "hard-boiled dicks" like Hammett's Sam Spade lies in their tarnished idealism.

Underneath the wisecracking, hard-drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative, chess-playing, and philosophical. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre's usual femme fatales, like Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, "He might seduce a countess; he would not despoil a virgin."

Marlowe has been played on the screen by Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Elliot Gould and many others.

Marlowe has proved such a complex and attractive character that he has appeared in short stories and novels by writers other than Chandler, such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration (1988).

Jules Maigret, known as (Commissaire) Maigret to most people, including his wife, is a fictional police detective, created by writer Georges Simenon.

Some of his trademark features are his pipes, his mixed approach to detecting (at times relying on pure intuition, at times on method) and his tendency to pop into small cafes to have several alcoholic beverages.

As with most protagonists in detective fiction, he is almost always successful. His sidekicks are not clichéd mindless puppets, only there to contrast with the brilliance of Maigret; instead, that rôle is reserved for the public prosecutor.

Seventy-five novels and twenty-eight shorter stories about Maigret were published between 1931 and 1972.

Dick Tracy is a newspaper comic strip created in 1931 by Chester Gould and distributed by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate. Dick Tracy is a hard hitting, fast shooting, and supremely intelligent police detective who matched wits with a variety of colorful villains. Gould wrote and drew the strip until 1977.

Gould introduced a raw violence to comic strips, reflecting the violence of 1930s Chicago. But Gould also did his best to keep up with the latest in crime fighting techniques and while Tracy often ends a case in a shootout, he uses forensic science, advanced gadgetry, and plain hard thinking to track the bad guy down. It has been suggested that this comic strip was the first example of the police procedural mystery story. Others noted that actual mystery plots were relatively rare in the stories since the comic strip format is a difficult one for that kind of plot. The real focus, they argue, is the chase with the criminal seen committing the crime and Dick Tracy figuring out the case and relentlessly pursuing the criminal who becomes increasingly desperate as the detective closes in.

The Gould villains are the strongest appeal of the story. Tracy’s world is decidedly black and white where the bad guys are sometimes so evil, their very flesh is deformed to announced their sins to the world. The evil sometimes is raw and coarse like the criminally insane Selbert Depool (that’s looped, spelled backwards, a typical Gould move) or the suave, yet arrogant Shoulders, who can’t help thinking that all women like him, or even bordering on genius like the Nazi spy Pruneface who is not only a machine design engineer but also dabbles with a chemical nerve gas. Tracy tackles all sorts of crime, too. Bicycle thieves, con men, pickpockets, gangsters, saboteurs, kidnappers, hit men, arsonists, junkies and, of course, twisted freaks hellbent on revenge. In an odd slip, one of his villains, Oodles, a jolly sort with a ballooning mop of black hair that hid his face, became too attractive. Gould had him hide out for a few weeks, lose over a hundred pounds, clip his hair and come out an unattractive, emaciated bum. However, by the most popular character was Flattop, a freelance hitman who had a large head that was as flat as an aircraft carrier's flight deck. He was hired by black marketeers to murder Tracy and he came within a hairsbreath of accomplishing that before deciding to blackmail his employers for more money before he did the deed. This proved to be a fatal mistake since it gave Tracy time to signal for help and he eventually defeated his assassin in a spectacular fight scene even as the police were storming the hideout. When Flattop was eventually killed, fans went into public mourning.

Dirk Gently is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Adams was working on a third Gently novel, The Salmon of Doubt, at the time of his death.

Dirk bills himself as a "holistic detective" who makes use of "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" to solve the whole crime, and find the whole person. In fact he is a con man, and the "holistic detective" label is basically an excuse to run up large expense accounts and then claim that every item was, due to the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, actually a vital part of the investigation. (Challenged on this point in the first novel, he claims that he cannot in fairness be considered to have ripped anybody off, because none of his clients have paid him yet.)

Dirk's career as a confidence trickster has been dogged by persistent bad luck: whatever bizarrely improbable thing he claims in order to get money always turns out to be true (or at least appears, by some improbable coincidence, to have turned out to be true), invariably in a way that means that he does not get the money, and often in a way that means he gets arrested, loses his house, or is otherwise severely inconvenienced. Similarly, his various attempts to make money as a fake psychic have resulted in a perfect success rate that leads to awkward questions being asked.

Dirk Gently is actually not this character's "real" name; it is presented early on in the first book that it is a pseudonym for the much less memorable "Svlad Cjelli." "to dirk" is an archaic synonym for "to stab", so essentially "Dirk Gently" literally means "stab gently".

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th century, created by British author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. He is famous for his prowess at using logic and careful observation to solve cases.

Holmes was said to have lived at 221B Baker Street (an upper-storey flat at 221 Baker Street; in early notes it was described as Upper Baker Street), where he spent many of his professional years with his friend and colleague Dr. Watson while the residence was maintained by Mrs. Hudson.

Sherlock Holmes describes himself as a "consulting detective", which means that he is brought into cases that have proven too difficult for other investigators; we are told that he is often able to solve a problem without leaving home (although this aspect is somewhat lost in the stories themselves, which focus on the more interesting cases which often do require him to do actual legwork). He specializes in solving unusual cases using his extraordinary powers of observation and "deduction".

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle credits the inception of Holmes on his teacher at the medical school of Edinburgh University, the gifted surgeon and forensic detective Joseph Bell, forensic science being a new type of science at the time. However, some years later Bell wrote to Conan Doyle: "you are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it" (Baring-Gould, p. 8). The 'Sherlock Holmes' name was derived from a pair of cricketers – however some early notes give his name as Sherrinford Holmes.

It is a popular myth that Sherlock Holmes gave rise to the entire genre of murder mystery fiction; in reality, the detective genre was alive before Holmes, if not one which followed a logical progression to the solution. Many fictional detectives have imitated Holmes' logical methods and followed in his footsteps, in many different ways. Some of the more popular fictional detectives to continue Holmes' legacy include Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Perry Mason, Columbo, Dick Tracy, and even the comic book superhero Batman. A modern variant might be the NBC series TV show Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Elijah Baley is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Robot series. He is a plainclothesman, a homicide detective on the New York City police force. Although Asimov's novels do not mention specific birth and death dates, they can be determined by close reading and inference: Elijah was born in 4679 and died in 4762. His wife, Jezebel Baley, prefers to be called Jessie. Their son, Bentley, became a leader in the second wave of interplanetary space exploration. The planet Baleyworld is named in Bentley's honor.

He is the main character of The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn, and the short story "Mirror Image". He is talked about heavily in Robots and Empire, which is set roughly two hundred years after his death.

Asimov's novels are typically devoid of profanity. Consequently, Baley's favourite expletive is "Jehoshaphat!" which he says in times of great stress or excitement.

Shin'ichi is a 17-year old student at Teitan High School (Titan High School) and is already a well-known detective. He dreams of being a great detective like Sherlock Holmes and got his dose of reality from his near-girlfriend Ran Mori (Rachel Moore). Shin'ichi's parents, Yusaku and Yukiko (Booker and Vivian) live in the United States while Shin'ichi lives in Japan.

But after witnessing a crime, Shin'ichi is captured and forced to ingest a chemical. The chemical turned him into a young child, and he had to get an alias. His alias is Conan Edogawa (Edogawa Conan), after Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo.

Shin'ichi, as Conan, isn't taken as seriously as a child, so he has to improvise. Shin'ichi frequently knocks out Kogoro Mori (Richard Moore) and uses his voice-changing bow tie to imitate Mori. Because of this, Kogoro Mori gets the credit.

Shin'ichi, as Conan, stays at Ran's house. Knowing that Ran misses Shin'ichi, "Conan" has to call her over the telephone and imitate his original voice so that she isn't worried about Shin'ichi. Only Dr. Agasa knows Conan's true identity.

Conan befriends three other children, Ayumi Yoshida (Amy), Genta Kojima (George), and Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya (Mitch). Together they form the Junior Detective League.

Albert Campion is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Margery Allingham. Supposedly Campion was created as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective Lord Peter Wimsey, although he established his own identity as the series progressed.

Born in 1900, Albert Campion is the pseudonym used by a man who is part of a prominent noble family in Britain. Well-educated, in his 20s he assumed the name Campion and began a life as an adventurer and detective. He first appeared as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley, an adventure story involving a ring of criminals.

Campion is thin, blonde, wears glasses, and is often described as inoffensive and bland. He is, nonetheless, a man of authority and action, and considers himself to be a helpful and comforting "Uncle Albert" to friends and those in need. He lives in a flat on Bottle Street in London above a police station, and his aided by his manservant, Lugg, an uncouth, rough-and-tumble fellow who used to be a burglar. He is good friends with Inspector Stanislaus Oates of Scotland Yard, who is as by-the-book as Campion is unorthodox. Campion also has friends and allies seemingly scattered all across the English countryside.

Campion's stories are generally adventures rather than true mysteries, as they rarely feature puzzles that the reader has a chance of solving. It's the characters and situations which carry the story. Most of the novels are short by modern standards - about 200 pages long.

Many criminals made the mistake of underestimating Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide investigator with a crumpled trench-coat and a beat-up car, who certainly acted as an incompetent bumbler.

But he was so polite to every suspect, and he talked so much about his wife (who we never got to see on any episode, but who many believe later had her own show, starring Kate Mulgrew, later of Star Trek: Voyager fame) that he lulled even the shrewdest murderer into a false sense of security.

And although the audience had witnessed the murder in the beginning of each episode, it was still a surprise to see what mistakes the killers had made during the seemingly perfect murder.

Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective created by the prolific American author Rex Stout in the 1930s and featured in dozens of books and short stories (many of them later collected into books). He is probably the best-known consulting detective after Sherlock Holmes. Wolfe was born in 1892 or 1893 in Trenton, New Jersey, but reared in Montenegro (according to one or two of the books, he was born there as well). He weighs about 285 pounds (and is 5'11" tall), raises orchids (in a rooftop greenhouse in his New York City brownstone rowhouse on West 35th Street, with the help of his employee Theodore Horstmann) as a hobby, drinks beer and is a gormand (and so employs a live-in cook, Fritz Brenner), and almost never leaves his house (where his office is). His leg-work is done by another live-in employee Archie Goodwin, who is also a licensed detective.
The idea that Nero Wolfe was the product of an affair between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler (whom Holmes always called "the Woman") in Montenegro in 1892, was published in the Baker Street Journal in 1956 by John D. Clark, and co-opted by William S. Baring-Gould. The creators of Wolfe and Holmes had no such connection in mind. Stout, who had the opportunity to accept or reject the suggestion, did neither.


The Nero Wolfe mysteries have been turned into several movies, some weekly radio series (1943 starring Santos Ortega, 1945 starring Francis X. Bushman, 1950 starring Sidney Greenstreet, and 1982 starring Mavor Moore ), and two television series (1977 starring William Conrad and 2000 starring Maury Chaykin).