In a way, this could be an
extension of the “Top 10 Fictional Detectives” list I wrote about three years
ago. But this time around, those that
made this list are detectives that have an “odd factor.” What do I mean by an
“odd factor”? There should be an aspect
or element in them that makes it unlikely for them to succeed as detectives but
has been so; they aren’t what you expect as detectives. Or there is a peculiar feature about them
that makes them interestingly unique from the archetypal fictional detective. The “odd factor” seems to be a vague
standard, but, in short, the “odd factor” is primarily about having a remarkable or wacky characteristic that significantly adds to the character’s dimensions.
There are several characters in the
abovementioned original “Fictional Detectives” list that have this “odd
factor”, but I won’t be including them here again so that there will be more room for other characters to be featured in this list. (Unfortunately, the Hardy Boys – which were the
earliest detective characters I encountered – fail to make this list again, for
they have no “odd factor” and are very much closer to the generic model of
fictional detectives)
10.) TOM SAWYER
Yes. Tom Sawyer has been featured as a
detective. Some might even be unfamiliar
of this fact. In Tom Sawyer, Detective, he and Huck Finn got the chance to play
detective – not as a make-believe role-playing game as they had done with being
“pirates” or “robbers”, but actually doing legit deduction for a legit
mystery. The story is another example of
Mark Twain’s versatility as a storyteller as he was able to mimic Conan Doyle’s
tone and narrative style, and was able to create a terrific parallel of Holmes
and Watson with Tom and Huck.
9.) MISS MARPLE
Jane Marple, more popularly known
as Miss Marple, is one of the two famous fictional detectives created by Agatha
Christie (the other being Hercule Poirot, who was part of my previous top 10 detective list). What makes her
remarkable as a detective is her age – she’s already an elderly spinster. The archetype dictates that Miss Marple
should be a fragile granny figure that is satisfied by spending the remaining
years of her life having tea and knitting; we assume unintimidating old ladies as
uninteresting and weak characters. But though
she does possess many of such qualities associated with elderly ladies – like
the tendency to be a long-winded talker – she, however, as a character is
neither idle nor boring. She is shrewd
and intelligent and fearless, giving her the capability of solving difficult
mysteries – usually murder.
8.) MYSTERY, INC. (THE SCOOBY
GANG)
I assume that everybody (especially
those that were born prior the 21st Century) knows and loves the
Scooby Gang – Scooby Doo, Shaggy, Fred, Daphney, and Velma. The cases that they find themselves in share
the same elements: the mystery would appear to be supernatural in nature, they
would investigate (with Shaggy and Scooby providing comic relief), the climax involves
the “monster” chasing them around but would eventually be apprehended by them –
usually accidentally – at the end of the chase sequence, then they would unmask
the “monster” to reveal that he is merely a man that dresses as a monster to
further a criminal cause.
7.) MARY RUSSELL
The Mary Russell series by Laurie
R. King – which I adore – features the adventures of Mary Russell and Sherlock
Holmes. This is, of course, a mere
reinvention and is not canon. Still,
this Sherlock Holmes reinvention is one of the best that has ever been done, in my
opinion. The portrayal in the series of
the Greatest Fictional Detective of All Time has been somewhat accurate to how
the character could have behaved. Thus,
the awesomeness factor of Sherlock Holmes’ presence in this series still
counts.
When Mary was 15 years old, she
would first meet Holmes, who was by then retired from his London practice and
was now residing on the Sussex countryside.
In this first meeting, she had greatly impressed Holmes with her strong
personality and raw deductive power. In
their next meeting, he would then proceed to train Russell as his protégé. And through his training, Mary would grow
into as close to a “Sherlock Holmes Version 2.0” as possible. Eventually, they would come into an agreement
of partnership and would go and solve cases together (though, I find Holmes
still being the more significant contributor and factor in their success).
When Mary turned 21, her partnership
with Homes blossomed into a “negotiated marriage” between them. Yes, the unthinkable happen to Sherlock
Holmes: romance ensued! And it’s kind of
creepy considering that the age gap between them is 32 to 39 years! Still, this development has been delivered by
the narrative in a logical, compelling, and enjoyable way that the creepiness
factor of it was reduced to “minimal” or “none” levels. The relationship between them was a sort of “non-romance
romance”; though the affection between them was real, the romance had been
notably secondary to their partnership as detectives. The behavior of their relationship remained
the same as their pre-marriage partnership’s; true to his character, Holmes
rarely showed his affection to his wife, and this was fine with Russell because
she understands Holmes’ character.
6.) JACQUES CLOUSEAU
Chief Inspector Clouseau is the
hero of the Pink Panther series. The
character was played by Peter Sellers in the original movies and by Steve
Martin in the remakes. While Peters is
indeed the better Clouseau, Martin’s portrayal has been hilarious as well. I laughed with Martin as Clouseau as much and
as hard as I laughed with Sellers.
Clouseau is a bumbling,
incompetent French police detective. He
is prone to making idiotic observations and decisions in his investigations. But despite of all of these, he seems
oblivious of his limitations and shortcomings.
He is tremendously pompous and egocentric; he maintains the delusional
belief that he is a brilliant detective.
However, the remarkable thing is, despite of his stupidity and
clumsiness, Clouseau would always successfully solve a case by accident and
luck.
5.) THE QUESTION
In the DC Universe, Batman is the
World’s Greatest Detective. And the one
that comes second to Batman as a superhero detective is either Elongated Man or
The Question.
I include the Question in this
list over Elongated Man because he is a more fascinating character. Like Batman, he has no superpowers but relies
on his superior intellect and high proficiency in hand-to-hand combat. As an investigative reporter in his civilian
identity, his great detective skills don’t come as a surprise. What makes him a deep character is his
fondness of philosophy and, in some depictions (especially in the DC animated
universe), conspiracy theories. But even
as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, his deductive and investigative skills
remain sharp and outstanding – his paranoia and obsessive character are no
hindrances. This aspect makes the
character quite amusing and enjoyable.
4.) LEROY “ENCYCLOPEDIA” BROWN
In my “Top 10 Fictional Detectives” list – particularly on the entry of the hero of Donald J. Sobol’s
Two-Minute Mysteries (the most fun brain twisters out there), Dr. Haledjian – I
acknowledged that I had not read any of Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books
yet. But since then, I was able to
finally read the book series and be familiarized with the boy detective.
Leroy Brown is very intelligent
and he retains massive amounts of facts from the books he read. He was even likened to “a complete library
walking around in sneakers.” For that he
was given the nickname, “Encyclopedia Brown.”
With his intelligence, he always wants to be helpful to others. As a walking encyclopedia, he graciously
answers whatever questions are thrown at him.
But he always waited a moment to answer – pretending to think – since if
he answers too quickly, he is afraid that people will not like him for sounding
too smart.
Possessing a rich range of
information and facts comes highly invaluable to Brown in solving his
cases. He easily finds significance on
seemingly mundane details of a case but are in fact vital for its
solution. He has shown versatility in
handling cases of different kinds – ranging from petty offenses and
misdemeanors (particularly between children) to those serious and criminal in
nature.
It is even implied that it was
because of Encyclopedia Brown that criminals are always caught in Leroy’s town,
Idaville. His father is the chief of
police in the town. And during their
family’s dinner time, Chief Brown would present his hard cases to his son. Before they leave the table, Encyclopedia has
already provided the solution.
3.) SIMON ARCHARD
Simon Archard is the hero of the Ruse comicbook series and is one of my most favorite comic book characters. He
is a master detective that is basically based on Sherlock Holmes. The primary difference between Holmes and
Achard is that Achard lives in a Victorian setting in which steampunk and
supernatural elements very much exist.
Like Holmes, Archard is extremely intelligent and versatile. He is considered a hero in his town,
Partington, for criminals greatly fear him and his mere presence keeps the
crime rate low.
Archard makes use of an
intelligence network, consisting of agents of different personalities and
status in life, for information. In the
recent mini-series, it was revealed that even Queen Victoria is one of his
agents. He also has an assistant – or
partner, as she insists – in Emma Bishop, who keeps the fact the she is
actually a sorceress a secret from Archard, though it implied that Archard is already
aware of this.
2.) RICHARD CASTLE
Rick Castle is a best-selling
novelist – his greatest works being spy and mystery thrillers featuring Derrick
Storm. After his encounter with police
detective Kate Becket, whom he had consulted for when she was tackling a case
of murders that mirrored murders portrayed in two of Castle’s crime novels, he
became mightily charmed by her. He found
it a lot of fun solving mysteries with her, and craved for more. Thus, under the charade of conducting
research for his next novel series, in which the main character, Nikki Heat,
would be based on Becket, Castle was able to get what he wanted: playing
“detective” with Becket. Since Castle is
friends with the mayor – and is a generous campaign contributor – he was
allowed by the police department, per the mayor’s instruction, to proceed on
with his “research.”
Becket was initially dismayed and
annoyed by the arrangement. However,
Castle proved to be a very valuable and compatible companion for her on her
cases. Kate would grow to appreciate him
and consider him as her partner. As a
mystery writer, Castle is familiar with the elements and structure of a mystery
and he displays the aptitude of a talented detective. Due to the necessity of researching material
when writing novels, he gained training in investigating, knowledge on a wide
range of matters, and different invaluable contacts and informants. And since he is writer, Castle’s imagination
dictates his way of thinking. When
solving a mystery, he attempts to make sense of it by applying a “what would
make a better story” perspective on it.
He thinks “out of the box”, and his theories are sometimes outrageous
and fantastic. But when his train of
thoughts is in a dialogue and is complemented by Becket’s grounded and discreet
way of thinking, Castle can soundly reason out towards a solid conclusion.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds remains
to be the greatest character Nathan Fillion has ever played. But I think the argument can be made that
Rick Castle is Fillion’s most captivating and entertaining character. While Captain Mal is indeed charming, Castle’s
own charm is more amplified – probably because it seems the characterization of
Castle is based on Nathan’s own charismatic, interesting personality. Aside from his natural charm, wit, and sense
of humor, what makes Nathan very fascinating is his awesome geekery. He is familiar and a fan of a wide area of
nerd properties. And this facet of
Nathan is explicitly integrated into the Richard Castle character. Like Nathan Fillion, Richard Castle is a
well-versed, lovable geek. Pop culture
and nerd culture themes are regularly featured in the show, which allows
Castle’s own geekery to shine. Thus, I
credit the fascinating layeredness of Richard Castle to the generous amount of his
own self that Nathan Fillion puts into the character.
1.) ODD THOMAS
(It’s only incidental that the
number one odd detective is someone named “Odd.” Or is it? Hehe.)
Ok. Odd Thomas has never been explicitly implied or
identified as a “detective” character.
However, he does do sleuthing and fight crime. And he does tackle mysteries, and had success
in piecing together information, inferring correctly, and catching the bad
guys. We can observe that those are
detective work. Thus, Odd Thomas is a
detective of sorts.
As a character created by Dean
Koontz – and his best one yet – Odd Thomas possesses the usual qualities of a
Koontz protagonist: a troubled past, smarts, heart, personality, and a very
entertaining wit.
Odd is a humble, unambitious, and charming young man with two very special talents. First, he’s an excellent, one-of-a-kind quick-order cook. Second, he can see ghosts.
That ability appears to be a
burden but Odd thinks otherwise. He
considers it a gift. He uses this
ability to help both the dead and the living.
He counsels or encourages the lingering dead to go forward the other
side, and he uses the clues given by ghosts – usually the victims – to prevent
more deaths and evil from happening. "I see dead people. But then, by God,
I do something about it," he said. He
seemingly possesses a Messiah complex since he readily assumes the
responsibility of preventing evil or capturing a criminal that he is very much
willing to go to great lengths as long as he carried out the task.
Aside of seeing ghosts, Odd also
possess another supernatural intuition power particularly called “psychic
magnetism.” Psychic magnetism allows
Odd, while moving around, to get drawn to the location of the person he really
wants to find or encounter.
With his psychic abilities, Odd
has succeeded many times in stopping evil from happening or bringing justice to
evil done. It’s doesn’t mean though that
Odd has to do no thinking at all because of his powers. No. In
the Odd Thomas universe, the ghosts can never talk, thus, they can never vocally
instruct or assist Odd. Thus, Odd still
needs to do some detective work to figure things out.
Odd doesn’t fear death. He even considers it as a reward since he
will be reunited with his lost love, Stormy.
Still, Odd is not suicidal. He
understands that killing himself won’t allow him to get his “reward”, thus, Odd
remains sensible in his decisions though a bit reckless. Because of this philosophy, investigative leg
work and nosing in the presence of danger comes easy for him.
Anton Yelchin did a great job portraying him in the recent movie adaptation.
No comments:
Post a Comment