Memorable Sleuths

For a change, I’m going to blog about my second genre in reading today. And here in this post I’m going to list out all of the sleuths that are memorable in my minds (I just can’t pick my favourite so I’m going with the bundles of them that stands out to me, in no inherent order):

• Sherlock Holmes- Okay, I admit it’s not the character so much as how the stories were written. I have a taste for plot-driven mysteries which is exactly what the original stories were. 
• Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series, I was actually going to read all of them and then I Googled her Z and found out I would never get to read it because the author had passed on)- quaint and socially reclusive, I can empathise with that. I think I lost sight of her in a bunch of the books but then she came in one of the ones at the end so I was kind of excited by that. 
• Tommy and Tuppence (Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence Mysteries)- the classic dynamic duo of detectives and the only sleuths from Christie that I actually liked (actually, perhaps this statement doesn’t really stand now but it stood when I read the series. Then, I’ve only read her Poirot and other standalone books. Since then, I think I kind of liked Miss Marple but not to the extent that I liked Tommy and Tuppence). 
• Mary Russell (Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes by Laurie R. King)- I was immediately taken by the premise when I encountered it and was determined to follow the series. But then after two books I had forgotten about the series altogether, resulting in an inability to track it when I remembered it once again. It was years down the track that I finally heard mention of it again in one of my FB reading groups. So far, I’m getting the feeling that the earlier books were written better, in terms of a quicker pace that suited me better. But I’ve got a long way to catch up so it might be just a not quite right impression. Anyway, I did like Mary quite a lot when I first encountered her. Like she really stood up on her own alongside Sherlock Holmes in the first book and Sherlock Holmes really stood up to his counterpart in the original. That’s why I was so eager to follow the series back then. 
• Brother Cadfael (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters)- the classic father figure of sleuths and I just really liked the blend of mystery and medieval cloister life. 
• Sister Fidelma (Sister Fidelma by Peter Tremayne)- I liked Fidelma well enough but I probably preferred the genre more compared to her. Those who’ve been following this blog know that I have a soft spot for genre-hybrids that blend any of my usual genres of fantasy, mystery or historical fiction.