Fictional detectives are some of the most beloved characters in print and on-screen. It’s easy to relate to someone with an overblown sense of justice and a need to set the world right (or as right as it can be).
There are nosy neighbors like Nancy Drew and Miss Marple with no real credentials whatsoever and police detectives — Hello, Harry Bosch! Ta, Inspector Lynley! — with entire departments behind them. Relentless journalists, dogged medical examiners, resourceful bounty hunters (We see you, Stefanie Plum!), and, perhaps, the most endearing detectives of them all: private eyes.
This show is all about the gumshoes who work outside the pesky laws of search warrants and chain of evidence. Who maybe toil in an office with a frosted glass door and a dame with moxie tapping away at a typewriter — or perhaps the dame with moxie is the detective. This installment celebrates independent investigators who distract and delight in their search for the truth.
In this episode, we meet the world’s first PI and first American lady detective, delve into Poe scholarship and the problem with his ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ and discuss one of the kindest mystery authors. Then we recommend five books we love that put us in the thick of dangerous inquiries, including the escapades of a thoroughly modern detective agency, an urban mystery with a bookish PI, a British caper with an unforgettable hero, a how-to for wannabe detectives, and a noir-tinged fantasy novel about a reluctant sleuth.
Read the full transcript of Detective Agency: Discreet Inquiries, Mysteries Solved.
Tuva Moodyson mystery series by Will Dean: Dark Pines, Black River
Perhaps you’d like to listen to some mood music while you dig into these links.
And some photos to set the scene…
Dave mentioned:
Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series — and we talked about the TV adaptation on this episode of The Library of Lost Time.
Peter May and his novel The Blackhouse which Mel recommended on our podcast episode Scotland: Wraiths, Rebels, and Royalty.
Science! The Difference Between Private Eyes, Detectives, and Sleuths.
The scoop on Allan Pinkerton’s Detective Agency from PBS.
Meet Kate Warne!
The Woman Who Helped Protect Lincoln From the Men Who Tried to Kill Him in 1861.
How Kate Warne, America’s First Woman Detective, Foiled a Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
How a Female Pinkerton Detective Helped Save Abraham Lincoln’s Life.
Interview with Greer MacAllister, author of Girl in Disguise, the fictionalized biography of Kate Warne.
Previous Podcast Episodes We Mentioned:
The Library: Endless Books, Reading Nooks, and Lots of Possibility.
Trains: Better Than Planes and Cars. Fight Me. — and the book The Edge by Dick Francis.
TV and Movies We Name-Dropped:
Statement 1: The man credited with starting the modern detective agency was a cardinal who worked with the Pope in the 1800s. Eugène-François Vidocq and the Birth of the Detective.
Statement 2: A French detective once solved a murder that he himself had committed. The unbelievable — but true! — story of Robert Ledru.
The Verifiers by Jane Pek
Her upcoming sequel The Rivals is available for pre-order now.
IQ by Joe Ide
CrimeReads: The Many Careers of Joe Ide.
Odds Against by Dick Francis
How Dick Francis Novels Helped This Writer Through a Personal Crisis.
If you’d like to read all of the Sid Halley mysteries — and you really should! — here are the titles in order: Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief, Under Orders, Refusal (Felix Francis), and Hands Down (Felix Francis).
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating by Steven Kerry Brown
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
His new book The Naming Song is available for pre-order.
Congratulations! You made it to the end. Here are your rewards:
Treat yourself to Mystery and Suspense Magazine — like this piece on Travel and Tourism Cozy Mysteries.
Or perhaps you’d like to listen to PI’s Declassified, a podcast that lets you eavesdrop as PIs discuss their real-life cases. ‘You’ll hear stories about lies and false confessions, tracking down missing persons, forensics, workplace violence, innocent people freed from prison, human trafficking, and other tantalizing cases.’
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