Watching The Detectives

[poliphilo]

I know a lot of people out there are fond of Lord Peter Wimsey, but here's what I think.

A fictional detective shouldn't be lovable, or cute or (God help us) sexy.

A fictional detective stands for Justice. And justice is cold and harsh and no respecter of persons.

Which is why Sherlock Holmes is the business.

You want warmly human? You want touchy-feely? Then give your detective a Watson. A Watson can be as cuddly as a cuddly thing with fluff all over it.

But your detective must be cold, hard, inhuman. (An odd glint of buried fires- a tenderness for some unattainable, long lost love- an Irene Adler- is permissible- but let it be only a glint.)

And let him/her be weird. The weirder the better!

Agatha Christie loved Miss Marple but came to hate Poirot.

Horrid, prissy little man!

Which is why I find Miss Marple tiresome, but can never get enough of David Suchet's Poirot.

Comments

[boxmint.livejournal.com]

Holmes--whom I love to DEATH--doesn't strike me as inhuman justice at all. He's a terrible, terrible showoff. Vanity is his passion. Remember that bit where he compares himself to Cleopatra? "I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety."

Where d'you stand on Josephine Tey's Alan Grant? (Who never gets married--because his daily life is so full of people that a barren room is a source of spiritual refreshment?)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I take your point.

I love Holmes too- and have done since I was a small boy.

"Inhuman" is the wrong word. Perhaps "other" would be better. Doyle produced something very rare in fiction- a convincing fictional portrait of genius.

I'm afraid I don't know Alan Grant, but I like that thing about the "barren room".