16 Beloved Detectives to Add to Your Reading Capers

Gig: Hard-boiled detective
Beat: A very noir 1940s Los Angeles
Opening Line: "It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars."

Gig: War veteran-turned-detective
Beat: London
Opening Line: "The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies. Photographers stood massed behind barriers patrolled by police, their long-snouted cameras poised, their breath rising like steam."

Gig: Amateur consulting detective
Beat: St. Mary Mead
Opening Line: "It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage. The conversation, though in the main irrelevant to the matter in hand, yet contained one or two suggestive incidents which influenced later developments."

Gig: Police detective
Beat: New York City in 2058
Opening Line: "She woke in the dark. Through the slats on the window shades, the first murky hint of dawn slipped, slanting shadowy bars over the bed. It was like waking in a cell."

Gig: Crime squad officer
Beat: Oslo
Opening Line: "Something was wrong. At first the female passport official had beamed: 'How are ya, mate?'"

Gig: Mustachioed Belgian private investigator
Beat: Throughout 1920s Europe
Opening Line: "The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves to write an account of the whole story."

Gig: "Holistic detective"
Beat: London with a paranormal twist
Opening Line: "This time there would be no witnesses. This time there was just the dead earth, a rumble of thunder, and the onset of that interminable light drizzle from the northeast by which so many of the world's most momentous events seem to be accompanied."

Gig: Detective
Beat: Botswana
Opening Line: "Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of the Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter."

Gig: Chief inspector of Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force for Quebec
Beat: Sleepy, yet murderous, Canadian villages
Opening Line: "Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much a surprise all around."

Gig: World War II veteran-turned-private investigator
Beat: Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood from the 1940s to the 1960s
Opening Line: "I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. It's not just that he was white but he wore an off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks."

Gig: Los Angeles police detective
Beat: Hollywood
Opening Line: "The boy couldn't see in the dark, but he didn't need to. Experience and long practice told him it was good."

Gig: Police officer-turned-private investigator
Beat: The fictional California town of Santa Teresa
Opening Line:"My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I'm thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids."

Gig: Federal police investigator
Beat: Remote parts of Australia
Opening Line: "Even those who didn't darken the door of the church from one Christmas to the next could tell there would be more mourners than seats."

Gig: High school dropout-turned-private eye
Beat: One of Los Angeles's toughest neighborhoods
Opening Line: "Isiah's crib looked like every other house on the block except the lawn was cut even, the paint was fresh, and the entrance was a little unusual."

Gig: Detective
Beat: New Orleans, Lousiana
Opening Line: "The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain has started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary."

Gig: Consulting detective
Beat: London
Opening Line: "In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon."