Guest Post - Behind the Magnifying Glass

Here is the good news. I am blogging again. I will be more realistic this time and keep my blogging to weekends only. As a commitment to my blogging effort, here is a guest post from IndiaBookStore. Thank you IndiaBookStore for this beautiful article. :)

Behind the Magnifying Glass- A List of Favourite Fictional Detectives

Hello from IndiaBookStore! We are book lovers ourselves, so we decided to start a service that helps everyone find books at the best prices online (so that you can get more books for your buck!) We also blog about books: reviews, interviews, articles, news, we try to have it all. Thank you, Ankita, for featuring us here!

Favourite fictional detectives are not unlike old friends- you know their quirks, you are familiar with their methods and yet, so often, they show a dazzling display of brilliance and a capability to surprise you which reminds you all over again why you love them so much. While fiction has had its share of brilliant detectives, here is an extremely subjective list of my favourite detectives, whose stories I can always re-read with relish, no matter how well-remembered the culprit and the plot, just for the sheer joy of reading them. 

1. Sherlock Holmes- How does one not begin with Sherlock Holmes? A character so beloved that generation after generation tries to replicate him in books, TV series and films. Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth was so iconic that Doyle was forced to bring him back from dead, eight years after he had killed him off, due to sheer public pressure. Sherlock’s strength lies in the fact that the stories are both character and plot driven. Hence, readers not only remember the fascinating details of the Red-Headed league or the chilly atmosphere of the moors in The Hound of the Baskervilles, they also remember the easy camaraderie of Holmes and Watson with the same fondness and delight. Holmes remains a cultural icon even today and recent adaptations merely add to the greatness of the original detective.
2. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple- This remains a cheat since Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer living in London (first seen in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920), and amateur detective Jane Marple, an elderly spinster living in St. Mary Mead (first seen in The Murder at the Vicarage, 1930) are unique detectives who would probably have balked if they ever had had to solve a mystery together. Agatha Christie’s iconic characters, whose stories are the third most widely published books in the world, are brilliant, observant and polar opposites of each other. However, the main essence of their books lies not in their well crafted mysteries, but in the human interest present in the books. Christie spends pages devoted to developing characters so that by the end, we not only want the culprit caught; we want the rest to be proven innocent. The characters, the banters, the humour, the tragic touch, the inevitable romantic end- hers is not a murder alone, hers is a whole by-play of human life. Hercule Poirot proudly proclaims, “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting” while Miss Marple smiles knowingly as they happily match make and fix futures of people while fighting for justice in their own way, making them the world’s foremost meddling and heartwarming detectives
3. Father Brown- G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, first seen in the short story ‘The Blue Cross’, 1910, is an old favourite. Despite the rather Gothic atmosphere, the scholarly outlook of the author, and the incongruous mildness of the detective (for detectives, even Miss Marple, are usually very agitated by the evil in men. Father Brown, invariably, chooses Christian forgiveness), Father Brown remains a brilliant if surprising detective. To the reformed criminal and then his friend, Flambeau, Father Brown is introduced as a mild, comical clergyman. The same man becomes a resounding power of good and mercy who changes the lives of the desperate with his love. Whether we see the books as an allegory of Christian forgiveness or a detective series with a religious undercurrent, the books, and the man himself are fascinating and worth a discovery. 
4. Flavia de Luce- A snooty, precocious, eleven year old genius solves mysteries in England in the late 1940s. If that is not fascinating enough, she is also a budding chemist, has a habit of being where she is not supposed to be and happens to live in a village which appears to be haunted by an astounding number of murders. Miss Marple would have felt right at home at Bishop’s Lacey. While her first book, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, has admittedly some weaknesses, the next books go from strength to strength with author Alan Bradley’s awareness of his characters flaws and strengths showing up more vividly in the narration. For fans of cozy drawing room mysteries, Flavia de Luce will be a surprise packaged in the comfort of old-world British murders.
5. Feluda- When it comes to favourite detectives, it is hard to be objective with our very own Bengali detective Feluda. Thanks to English translations of one of the most famous creations of Satyajit Ray’s, Feluda has suddenly become accessible to the rest of the English speaking country and no more remains just a treasured childhood memory of Bengali denizens of the world. Helped with his nephew Topshe and his friend Jatayu, Feluda has a unique contribution to detective literature in India. Not only are the sensibilities of his plots very strictly maintained for a young audience, he shows a fascinating side of India in the 1970s, becoming a living social and historical study. While easy to dismiss as literature for children, it is Satyajit Ray’s genius which makes the detective so relevant, entertaining and plain, old good fiction.

                                                                                                                                - written by Ritika Palit