Detective Stories

"I like detective stories. And detectives... Brainy's the new sexy." --Irene Adler, BBC's Sherlock: 2x01: A Scandal in Belgravia

My sentiments exactly to the above quote. Even if a book or movie isn't directly in the mystery genre, but just has an intriguing plot and/or overtone, that's good enough for me. I've always had a passion for mystery stories ever since I was young. I always tell people whenever they ask that I don't really have favorites (like favorite type of music, favorite type of food, favorite type of movies, etc), but I will say that if a book or movie is in the mystery genre, it will most likely gain at least a few points in my book.

NANCY DREW

As a kid/preteen, I read the Nancy Drew series. I absolutely LOVED these books as a kid! I think these were probably my first leap into the mystery genre. I'm going to do my best to describe her from memory. It's been years since I read the books. Nancy Drew is an 18-year-old girl who lives with her dad and housekeeper. She's extremely polite and modest, as well as very attractive and talented. If I recall, she comes across a lot of her cases either by accident or because her Dad is a lawyer. She also doesn't accept payment for them if she can help it. I like the Nancy Drew books because they are particularly unique compared to a lot of detective stories nowadays. The originals were set in (I think) the 1950's/60's which is an interesting time period to me. Plus, FEMALE detective! Heck yeah! I can't really rant too much on this (although I kind of really want to) because I haven't read these books in years :(

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Sometime in my early teens I began to read the Sherlock Holmes stories (read my blog post here). Those are true detective stories. They turn crime-solving into a sort of science, instead of the detective solving the mystery mostly because of their own dumb luck. Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating detective whom I adore in basically all adaptations, because he's just a brilliant character. Starting from the original source. If you watch this extraordinary video here, you will see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself explaining how he came to write the Sherlock Holmes stories. I agree wholeheartedly with everything he says and I think that it just goes to prove how Sherlock Holmes is a exceptionally unique detective. Sherlock Holmes is a middle aged man who lives with his flatmate in London. He is a bit of an eccentric because he has such a brilliant mind, capable of noticing the tiniest details and making incredible deductions from them. He is inconsistent with his habits especially while on a case, he has a cocaine problem, he plays the violin, he is fair-mannered for the time period although not extremely polite, he can be very moody, and one of his enemies says that one of his biggest weaknesses is his endless curiosity. I love, love, love Holmes! He is an actual detective for hire (aka private detective) and is "the world's only consulting detective" (meaning when the police are out of their depths, they consult him). I love how utterly brilliant he is, how he can make such giant, yet accurate leaps from the tiniest details. (Like in BBC's Sherlock, he is able to determine that a murdered woman travelled to London from Cardiff because her coat was damp). I love his arrogance and indifference to everybody's opinion of him, because he knows that they have to put up with him because they need his expertise.

SHAWN SPENCER

Lately I've started watching the TV show, Psych. (My family started watching it while I was at college, so when I came home and saw a few episodes, I thought it looked interesting so I decided to start from the beginning. Before I knew it, I had passed them up and finished all the episodes up to the current one.) Shawn Spencer is yet another fascinating detective. His hyper observational skills and photographic memory allow him to pass himself off as a psychic. Someone on my other blog described Psych as "Sherlock Holmes on a sugar high", which is actually pretty darn accurate in my opinion. Like Sherlock, he is a detective for hire/private detective, but he is also a constant consultant for the police. Also, in Sherlock's case, at one point he was eventually considered to be a fraud because his deductive powers and sleuthing skills just seemed too unnatural to be real. The same thing happened here, except Shawn managed to get out of it by claiming to be psychic. Anyways, focusing back on Shawn, not Sherlock. In one episode he was profiled by a criminal profiler as "highly intelligent, but you’re shameful of that fact so you play it down with the use of inappropriate behavior, and you live in fear of showing your weakness so you hide behind a constant barrage of jokes and sarcasm." Yeah, I think that about sums up his character in the best possible way, I don't think I could really add much more onto that. He grew up with a police officer for a father, who wanted nothing more than his son to follow in his footsteps, so Shawn really did not have a normal childhood at all. He would be locked in the trunk of a car and told to escape, he wasn't allowed to read comic books, he was reprimanded for playing hide-and-seek "wrong", etc. Despite having a strange childhood, he learned some good life skills that turned him into a great detective. I love the show because most of the mysteries are intriguing and the comedy is gold! I laugh my head off in every single one.