detection preferences
Dec. 6th, 2010 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird1When it comes to fictional detectives, you have:
Miss Marple ("it's just not what he'd do...")
to
Rick Castle ("this would be a bit more likely - and would make a much better story")
to
lots of detectives in the middle who are too non-quirky to discuss
to
Hercule Poirot ("logically, this alarm clock could only have been heard by someone inside the room - so she must have been lying")
to
Sherlock Holmes ("ahah! footprints! which proves that the crime was committed by a Bolivian man with red hair, money troubles, and a savage history")
Miss Marple is practically using intuition (as well thought-out as her deductions generally are) - and then the continuum goes on into more clue-based territory, putting more and more importance into finding the facts... until we're up to Holmes, who is almost using intuition again.
(Seriously - I read a Sherlock Holmes story once. He found some footprints, measured the distance between them, and spied a gold wedding ring that someone had dropped. From this he deduced forty pages of the villain's personal history. And he was right about every bit of it.)
I tend to prefer my detectives from the Marpleish end of the spectrum. (Although the occasional clue-heavy mystery can be fun.)
Of course, there are also Nancy Drew clones: where the detective runs around speculating wildly until the villain kidnaps them, tells them the whole plot, and then leaves them to get rescued.
They're... kind of strange.
Miss Marple ("it's just not what he'd do...")
to
Rick Castle ("this would be a bit more likely - and would make a much better story")
to
lots of detectives in the middle who are too non-quirky to discuss
to
Hercule Poirot ("logically, this alarm clock could only have been heard by someone inside the room - so she must have been lying")
to
Sherlock Holmes ("ahah! footprints! which proves that the crime was committed by a Bolivian man with red hair, money troubles, and a savage history")
Miss Marple is practically using intuition (as well thought-out as her deductions generally are) - and then the continuum goes on into more clue-based territory, putting more and more importance into finding the facts... until we're up to Holmes, who is almost using intuition again.
(Seriously - I read a Sherlock Holmes story once. He found some footprints, measured the distance between them, and spied a gold wedding ring that someone had dropped. From this he deduced forty pages of the villain's personal history. And he was right about every bit of it.)
I tend to prefer my detectives from the Marpleish end of the spectrum. (Although the occasional clue-heavy mystery can be fun.)
Of course, there are also Nancy Drew clones: where the detective runs around speculating wildly until the villain kidnaps them, tells them the whole plot, and then leaves them to get rescued.
They're... kind of strange.