Greatest Fictional Crime Fighters?

[John Baird]

What do you think of this list ( The List ) of the best fictional crime fighters of all time (from literature)? There are a few notable omissions but who would be in your top three? For me it’s Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer.

 

[Tom Greer]

Re Inspector Moltalbano, that's one of the current detective shows on Saturday nights on BBC 4 in Britain. I read one of the novels in Italy. My partner Jane loves all things Italian and LOVES Moltalbano. She even had me watch it in Rome in Italian and which Italian subtitles...to help improve her Italian!

Re RD Wingfield and Inspector Frost...Wingfield used to work in the same office as my dad and named many of the characters (including Jack Frost) from people who worked in my dad's office (Petrofina in London) and my dad knew the real Jack Frost!

[I. J. Parker]

Great memories.  Alas, we don't get Montalbano here.  Or at least not yet.

[John Baird]

Nice. What did the real Frost make of it?

[Tom Greer]

I'm currently watching the box set of all the Morse series (all 33 hours of it).

[I. J. Parker]

Sounds good.

[Tom Greer]

I'd vote for Ian Rankin's Rebus.

[I. J. Parker]

Rebus is forever sitting in bars.  That's getting old.

[Julian Donn]

I like Harry Bosche, probably prefer Dave Robicheaux.

And Carl Morck, Jussi Adler-Olsen's Keeper of Lost Causes.

[Lucie Smoker]

I love Sherlock, Nancy Drew :), Kay Scarpetta, Bosch, James Bond, and maybe Jack Reacher? Sometimes the movies are so awful they affect my mental vision of the character.

[I. J. Parker]

Reacher is actually a great character.  That is, he is different from other crime fighters, an original and altogether memorable figure. Not all the books are very good, though.

[John Baird]

I find Reacher's rootless, ghostlike existence a bit of a stretch. And I can't identify with him. I like Child's writing style though. 

[I. J. Parker]

Actually, that's what I like. He becomes almost mythical. (That is not to say that it works on a realistic level.  Just that it makes excellent reading).