#Detective Fiction

[detectivejay]

Time for a new poll! I'm curious to see the spread of answers on this one (and hear any other series not on the list.) Tried to go for a range of older and newer series on here, more on the older end of the spectrum, but I can't cover everything with the limited poll options here, so I hope you'll share your answers! :)

Please reblog for a larger sample size, thank you!

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What is a detective?

I have no idea. I'll investigate and find clues to help solve the mystery.

[poirott]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AGATHA CHRISTIE! (b. September 15 1890)

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

[youseethehat]

He's looking at a hot dog

[secretlyafiveheadeddragon]

Sherlock Holmes is John watson’s manic pixie dream girl

[mysharona1987]

[cephalopadre]

Mechtober Days 9 & 10: Ace Detective Prowl and his snarky partner Chromedome!

The Prowl and Chromedome detective stuff comes from Transformers IDW G1 issue "Shadowplay", the precipitate stuff is a plot twist near and dear to my heart from Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the comic format's riffing on Aoyama's Detective Conan. Truly self indulgent stuff here, lol. Warpath's the culprit because robot Mrs. Inglethorpe would've been into him being a tank.

[mercury-waters]

09.12.2024 - a book that changed my life

the house of silk by anthony horowitz

"it is impossible to imagine what the world will be like by then, what advances mankind will have made, but perhaps future readers will be more inured to scandal and corruption than my own would have been. to them i bequeath one last portrait of Sherlock Holmes, and a perspective that has not been seen before."

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

woke detective literature be like

SHE/HERlock holmes

hercule POLYrot

john watson

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Introduction

The world of Eureka is, for the most part, just like our own. Its history is our history. Its people have families, friends, jobs, struggles, and flaws. It is a world that those who inhabit it think they know well, trusting science—or at least headlines about science—to tell them all the answers. We all learned that there were no monsters under the bed when we were six years old, and everyone knows force equals mass times acceleration, right?

Theft, disappearances, murder, conspiracy; in the world of Eureka, there are mysteries to be solved, and investigation will lead to answers–sometimes inexplicable answers, but answers. Perpetrators can be punished, victims can be rescued - but the dangerous and unexplained do not confine themselves to the mystery at hand. There's always another mystery to solve. Perhaps one was at your side the entire time….

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a role playing game for veterans and newbies alike about mystery-solving detectives (amateur or professional) using their different sets of knowledge, personalities, and unique gameplay mechanics to sleuth their way through a challenging world. Roleplay and mechanics are tightly bound together, supporting rather than resisting each other, and your character’s unique personality and traits will ensure a totally different gameplay experience from your fellow players’. Eureka supports and rewards real-time deduction from the players and gives you the power to build drama, suspense, and excitement around every corner! (You can also get the latest PDF for FREE for a limited time by joining the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!)

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[shehriyana]

Oh to be a little gay detective who speaks in a preposterous accent and occasionally slips out of it to hint at how ridiculously funny he is as a character within the literary imagination.

Oh to be able to stand up for women who have been belittled by the unkind and the privileged, to be a cerebral force that unfailingly outwits the malevolent and the ignorant.

Oh to have Hugh Grant as my dreamboat partner, who stress bakes every now and then, who I had proposed to with some exceedingly goofy pun (like “only you can fill the Blanc in my life”), who answers the door all messy and covered in flour as I am attending a zoom call in my bathtub in my eccentric little Moroccan hat.

Oh to be Benoit Blanc.

[detectivejay]

I'm sure this has been done countless times, but polls are fun and I'm curious, so... For the purposes of this poll, I'm only counting shows/books/games/etc. where Sherlock is a main or very prominent secondary character, there's a decent amount of other Sherlock canon characters represented (at least a version of a John Watson), and there are some references made to the ACD originals. Not counting where he's only a relative of the lead but not a main (like Enola Holmes, RKDD, etc.)

Not counting the ACD original canon as an adaptation here, as none of these would exist without it. Everything else listed is adapting it in some way.

There's also some series I haven't watched/read yet but have been recommended that aren't on here yet for the purposes of space, including Detective L, Miss Sherlock and the Bonnie MacBird Sherlock books.

Feel free to reblog this for a larger sample size :)

[citizenscreen]

“The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett was published on or about February 14, 1930.

[the-pea-and-the-sun]

ok so i talk a lot abt how i find inverted detective stories/howcatchems more compelling than whodunnits but i feel like knives out v glass onion shows like. the fundamental difference between a rly good howcatchem an a rly good whodunnit and why i will always ultimately prefer howcatchems. (the howcatchems im mostly thinking of here besides knives out include columbo, hannibal [the book series and nbc hannibal], and death note)

obviously knives out subverts the distinction between those genres in the first place, but like fundamentally knives out is about showing us the perspective of the person trying to evade the detective while glass onion is showing us the detective's perspective. if we are seeing the story primarily from the perspective of the person trying to avoid detection, that type of story if more compelling to me even if, like in knives out, they don't actually end up being "the killer" or a villain protagonist.

people often think of the killer's perspective as the less relatable one, but being positioned as having motives directly contrary to the motives of the figure of authority, while being forced to cooperate with them anyway, is a position that a lot more people have been in and can relate to i think (besides it being the overall more difficult and sympathetic position to be in). and the person who's eyes we're seeing through has committed the most unforgivable sin possible. so a good howcatchem allows the audience to feel that sick fear of being the most hated, the most evil and irredeemable person possible. even if we're rooting for the detective, it allows us to empathize with someone who's committed the worst possible crime, and imagine what we would do under similar circumstances. (in knives out, this is taken to its most extreme, where even the victim is rooting for the apparent killer)

in a whodunnit sympathy for the killer is not necessary, and can even detract from the plot since the story needs to spend an equal amount of time focusing on several potential killers for the payoff of the reveal at the end. the killer can be completely unlikable and impossible to sympathize with, like in "glass onion", and the story can still work. their perspective can be safely dismissed except when its relevant to the mystery.

in a howcatchem on the other hand, "the killer" is not just one of many potential answers to a riddle. the killer is the single person that the detective has to understand and empathize with completely in order to solve the case. hannibal and death note are of course all about blurring the line between the killer and the detective, implying that to truly understand the killer the detective has to have a sort of super-empathy, and be able to understand the way the killer thinks by "getting into their head", often losing parts of themselves in the process (i think this is true of all dn adaptations but is basically explicitly stated in the musical). the killer and the detective have apparently opposite goals, but because of the level of empathy required to catch and evade one another, they become one in the same. even in columbo and knives out where the blurring between the detective and the killer is less of a central theme than it is in the other examples i mentioned, the detective is still unusually kind to the killer, even friendly, and the killer struggles not to be charmed by the detective, struggles to stay away from them despite the eminent danger that the detective represents. even if the detective's goal is still ultimately to find the truth, their kindness toward the person who they know to be a killer is genuine. unlike in a whodunnit, in a howcatchem the relationship between the detective and the killer is the heart of the story.

when we are seeing from the perspective of a watson in a whodunnit, we want the truth to be revealed, we want the killer to be seen. we watch the detective uncover the truth while they explain to us as outsiders how he got there. but in a howcatchem the killer and the watson become one in the same. we are the killer, but we still want what the watson wants. we want to be seen, wholly and completely, by the detective. we want to purge ourselves of what we've done wrong and be seen for what we tried to do right. only the singular "greatest detective", uniquely better than all other detectives, uniquely capable of divine retribution, could possibly see us. we cannot allow anyone else to judge us, anyone else would see only the crime and the criminal and not the person behind it.

we, as both the killer and the audience, love the detective. the detective is charming and clever and impressive, strange, mysterious and aloof. the detective knows what we did and is kind to us anyway. we are the killer and we want to be made to confess. we want to lose to someone better than us, smarter than us, kinder than us. only the detective can reveal our sin, only the detective can see all and still forgive us. in both types of detective stories the detective represents divine punishment, but only in howcatchems does the detective also represent divine forgiveness. the detectives singular goal may be to reveal and punish sin but the detective will always love the sinner. we as the killer will confess to nobody but a god.

so yeah 👍 knives out is rly good i enjoyed it

[cineresis]

Angels in America

It's amazing how fast an evening at your favorite club can be ruined by someone keeling over and frothing at the mouth. The band never quite gets back into the swing of things afterwards.

"Angel," sighed one of the men, or nearest approximants, at the table next to mine, "why is it that I can never go anywhere with you without stumbling across a body?"

"Oh, come now," said his partner, a soft, fluffy confection in caramel and cream, rising hastily to make his way toward the source of the commotion. The first gentleman, dark, lanky, and excruciatingly chic, got up to follow him. "It's hardly every time."

I stayed where I was for now, casting my gaze around the room as I went over my memory of the past twenty or thirty minutes. Too many people passing close enough to slip something into the victim's drink, too many others to watch at the same time, too many more opportunities to poison him outside my field of view. I was a detective, not God.

"Stumbling upon, once. Literally. Do you know what it's like to have to clean up after that sort of thing? It takes a personal toll."

"Hush, Crowley," chided "Angel". "People can hear you, and you know how queer they get about these things. Ooh, yes, that's strychnine, all right," he added cheerfully, pulling a small vial from his vest pocket and tipping it into his handkerchief. "Nasty stuff."

I got up. As I approached, I caught the faint, unmistakable chemical sweetness of ether fumes and gave them a wide berth, choosing instead to inspect the victim's plate and glass before turning to scan the room from this perspective.

"Now, just what might you be doing?" drawled Crowley.

I looked him over, too, while I was at it. In Crowley's case, this involved a lot of looking and not much over; he was easily more than six feet tall, even while slouching rakishly. The snake tattoo on his right temple suggested certain things about him. The dark glasses that he hadn't removed since he'd entered just suggested questions, since I highly doubted he was blind. "I'm a detective," I said, leaving the obviously at the end of that sentence to implication. "What are you doing?"

This response seemed to delight him. "So are we," Crowley answered, and grinned. "But if you want to get specific about it, I'm keeping you distracted while my friend saves this man's life. Let's see your license, then."

As I took it out, keeping at least one eye on him and his partner, Angel called out to the rubbernecking crowd around us, "I need someone here to run and call the nearest hospital, and a couple of strong men to help get this poor fellow someplace dark and quiet to rest. Best use one of the tablecloths for a stretcher," he added to the first volunteer who stepped forward.

Crowley leaned in closer to study my license. "Drake Silas Donovan," he read off. "'Silas', really?"

"What about it?"

"I've just always wondered what kind of parent would name their kid Silas."

"The kind who had a grandfather named Silas," I replied coolly, snagging my license back. "Your turn."

He obliged. Anthony J. Crowley, it read, licensed in London since 1905, the year before mine. I wondered how long he'd been at this; he looked too young for his apparent age, but then I looked too old for mine. "A. J. Crowley," I read his signature aloud. "Get asked if you're any relation every time, or just most?"

There's a certain motion a person's head makes when they roll their eyes. Crowley's was making it. "The man's an embarrassment to the side," he griped. "I made my name legitimately."

"And your friend?" It wasn't as if I couldn't put two and two together. There's a certain type of person who's got both a nose for trouble and the brains to prepare for it; if it walks, talks, and thinks like a dick, it probably is one. It was just that I wasn't in the habit of trusting people, and I'd be a real schmuck to neglect basic due diligence on the guy purportedly surrounded by bodies. 

Detectives are no better or worse than any other person. They just think it's usually more interesting to solve crimes than commit them.

"Oh, he's as legitimate as it gets." Crowley turned to his companion, who was getting to his feet, brushing his clothes off fussily. Beside him, the two volunteers hoisted the unconscious victim onto a tablecloth spread across the floor, momentarily dislodging the ether-soaked cloth before Angel caught it and laid it carefully back in place over the victim's nose and mouth. "Aren't you, Aziraphale?"

Angel — "Aziraphale"? — looked up, startled. "Pardon?"

"Mr. Donovan here wants to see your detective's license," Crowley explained, enunciating his words with malice aforethought.

"Oh! Yes. Of course I always have that with me. Now just where did I..." He started patting down his pockets, stopped suddenly, and took a lovely calfskin card holder out of his coat. "Ah. Here it is."

Beaming, he passed it to Crowley, who passed it to me with the comment, "You'll find everything in order, I'm sure."

I glanced down at the card, then back up at Angel. "Am I supposed to call you A. Z. Fell or Aziraphale?" I asked, pronouncing the Z correctly as zed.

"A. Z. Fell is how 'Aziraphale' is pronounced in the King's English," said Crowley blandly, affecting a cut-glass Oxford accent on the last phrase. His partner seemed pleased by this comment, rather than annoyed.

"I'm afraid my progenitor bestowed me with a rather unwieldy given name," Fell admitted, raising fascinating questions about just how many syllables the British peerage could fit on a birth certificate when they really tried. "Aziraphale just sounds so much more euphonious, don't you think?" Crowley was right; I couldn't tell whether Fell had meant to say A. Z. Fell or the de-accented gloss. He'd lengthened the half-syllable between zed and Fell to a full vowel, but some people said zetta.

"I wouldn't know," I replied, handing the license back to Crowley, who was nearest. When Fell didn't take my bait, I added, "Lucky that you happened to have ether handy. I wouldn't like to imagine what might've happened if you'd decided to stay in tonight." I also lied when I said sorry, and when I swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Little white lies are the oil in the gears of civilization.

"Oh, I always carry that, too," Fell explained earnestly. "One gets into the habit after one's first run-in with strychnine, and of course ether has so many useful applica—"

"I wouldn't, angel," Crowley interrupted, sounding very amused. "Mr. Donovan thinks you're the one behind this."

"Oh," said Fell, nonplussed. "Gosh. Well, I — I suppose I can't blame him. He doesn't know me from Adam, after all, and has no reason to trust me — I did warn you about giving people funny ideas, Crowley, honestly. Of course," Fell turned to me, laying an elegant hand across his chest, "if you were to search me, you would find only a small collection of antidotes — oh, but a habitual poisoner would probably carry those, too, especially if he were the sort of voyeur with a penchant for playing the hero. I certainly wouldn't be convinced of my innocence. Yes, I can certainly understand whatever suspicion you might feel towards me, however misplaced it may be."

Crowley watched this thought process with an expression somewhere between fascination and agony. "Well, at least now he probably thinks that if you'd done it, you'd have been caught by now," he remarked, presumably because he was thinking the same thing. "You'll have to excuse my friend," Crowley added to me. "He still believes that the innocent have nothing to fear. Somehow."

"First time visiting?" I guessed.

Fell's bemusement answered my question before he did. "Pardon?"

"Never mind."

[secretlyafiveheadeddragon]

the hound of the baskervilles is so funny to me because the entire time Watson is just like “did I do a good job? Please tell me I did a good job. Do you like me? Are you proud of me? I love you!” And it’s so funny, this guy is down BAD