In kicking off an article about amateur detectives of yore, most of whom just happen to be married, the obvious opener would a play on the phrase “’til death do us part.” Since I’m not clever enough to come up with anything I’ll invite the reader to insert their own. In any event, here are a few great couples from way on back. Some are best known for their appearances in fiction while others are remembered for their time spent on the big screen.
Tommy & Tuppence: Chronologically speaking I suppose you’d have to start this list with Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence (Thomas and Prudence Beresford), though perhaps there were other crime-solving couples who predated them. Starting with The Secret Adversary in 1922 (supposedly the first Christie work to be filmed, six years later), they appeared in a total of five novels and a story collection over the next half century. Unlike so many ageless fictional series characters they actually grew older in these successive appearances.
I liked Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as much (and perhaps even a bit more) than the next person. When I watched it again a few years back I found that it didn’t pack quite as much of a punch as it had all those years earlier when I first saw it, but it was still worth watching to admire Hitchcock’s skill in creating it.
If you’re going to get bumped off outside the pages of a mystery novel, chances are pretty good that you won’t be the victim of poison. It’s more likely that you’ll be shot, stabbed, or clubbed. As of 2008, according to the Department of Justice, the most popular methods of doing away with someone in the United States were guns, knives, and blunt objects, in that order. Poisoning fell into the sixth-ranked All Other category along with other miscellaneous means of mayhem such as explosives and narcotics.
As of May 2011, Guinness World Records claimed that Sherlock Holmes was “the most frequently recurring character on screen,” having been portrayed in 238 films. As far as books that chronicle Holmes and Watson’s adventures, there have been countless volumes published, in addition to those by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The late Dr. Isaac Asimov was nothing if not prolific. By most estimates he turned out more than 500 books on a wide variety of topics in a working lifetime that apparently spanned about a half century. Asimov became a household name with his popular works of science fiction, including the Foundation Series and numerous others. After his science fiction, Asimov was probably best known turning out a heap of non-fiction books that looked at various science-related topics written with a lay audience in mind.
Then there’s The Lone Wolf. Until Turner Classic Movies showed a number of The Lone Wolf movies a while back I hadn’t even heard of this particular fictional creation. Louis Joseph Vance was a prolific author who wrote more than forty novels but his main claim to fame nowadays are the eight volumes he wrote chronicling the exploits of The Lone Wolf between 1914 and 1934.
I’ve watched a number of episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents over the years and given that it recently began airing on the Encore Suspense cable channel not long ago, I’m sure I’ll watch quite a few more. What I didn’t realize was what a formidable presence it was in its day. The show kicked off in 1955 and aired for a total of ten years and 363 episodes before it was all said and done, later garnering a vote as Time’s 18th best TV show of all time.
I’m not particularly fond of books. Well, maybe I should elaborate on that statement a bit. I like to read books. Always have. I can appreciate the aesthetic value of certain types of books, which in my case would mostly be old, slightly ratty and rather musty smelling paperbacks. But as much as I like to read books I don’t really feel the need to own them, at least not anymore. Maybe that’s the end result of a period when I had the pleasure of moving a dozen times in as many years, lugging books around the country. But I digress.
It’s probably not surprising that so much mystery fiction is set on cruise ships and similar vessels. This form of travel used to be the only game in town for going great distances across large bodies of water. Nowadays, people are less likely to travel this way out of necessity, but there’s a thriving cruise industry that depends on pleasure seekers taking to the water. For mystery authors, fiction set on the water has the bonus of allowing them to isolate a group of victims/suspects from the rest of the world. Given how much of this fiction exists, it would be foolish to try to look at it all in one short article, so I will stick with some highlights.
I never intended to make an informal survey of the many appearances of Harry Houdini in the annals of mystery fiction. It just sort of happened that way. Quite frankly, until I began investigating the matter I didn’t realize that he was a character so beloved by mystery writers—and writers in general, even celebrity authors such as William Shatner, who “co-wrote” a book in which Houdini and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle team up to determine if there really is life after death.
Let’s have a big round of applause for Turner Classic Movies. Nowadays there are any number of ways to access the classic comic mystery movies that seemed to flourish in the thirties and forties but there’s probably no easier way than to point your recording device of choice to TCM and press record. I’ve been catching up on a number of such films this way and as of this writing a Thin Man marathon is only about a week away.
I have to confess to a weakness for as many good old-fashioned country house murder mysteries as I can lay my hands on. One of my favorite mystery movies is Gosford Park, in which writer Julian Fellowes and director Robert Altman take this old warhorse of a subgenre and lend it a dimension rarely seen in works of cinema or print.
Readers of mystery fiction may or may not be the most avid fans of their particular genre but they’ve got to be high on the list. Which might go a long way toward explaining why so much mystery fiction takes place in and around bookstores, and particularly mystery bookstores.
Most of us probably know Hallmark as the greeting card people, but if your cable TV lineup extends beyond the basic selections you may have noticed that somewhere higher up there in the channel range is a creature known as the Hallmark Movie Channel. While Hallmark’s not going to give Hollywood a run for their money anytime soon, they do generate quite a few original movies, including nearly 250 Hallmark Hall of Fame titles alone over the course of several decades. 
Among Hallmark’s output of original films are a number of series that might be of interest to mystery fans. They include Jane Doe (starring Lea Thompson), which chronicles the adventures of a soccer mom type, who also happens to work for something known as the Central Security Agency. There is also McBride, which stars John Larroquette as a crime-solving lawyer. And the Jesse Stone movies, although not made for or by Hallmark, air frequently there and chronicle the adventures of the popular Robert B. Parker character. 
Trends may come and trends may go (though I’ve got a case of Pet Rocks stashed in the basement for when they make a comeback). One recent publishing trend that may have already seen its heyday come and go is the so-called mashup novel.The first of these, apparently, was the rather popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was a collaboration, of sorts, between Jane Austen and one Seth Grahame-Smith. Other titles in this vein have included Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Little Women and Werewolves, and Mansfield Park and Mummies.
I count myself fortunate to hang my hat in a city that’s home to three very large used bookstores. They stock a bunch of other stuff and they actually bill themselves as entertainment exchanges, but for my money they’re just big buildings full of enough used books to make you go weak in the knees.
Dances with Dancers (A Dance Instructor Mystery)
I rarely leave my house. I do like it here. I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me. Nero Wolfe - Before I Die
almost as exciting as watching paint dry. But while it’s hardly a dream job, it keeps Pandy Stark clear of the employment office. Things start picking up at old Mr. Draggasac’s birthday party when he drops a handful of lit candles in his lap and is later found behind the lifeguard stand with a medium-sized swordfish driven deeply into his torso.
