Matching the Detectives Trivia Quiz

Picture solution: Do I really need to tell you that it is a picture of a hammer?

Mike Hammer is a private eye that is tough to ignore... possibly because of the extremities that he goes to. Brutally violent, he burst onto the scene in 1947's "I, the Jury", where he sets out to avenge the death of a friend and leaves subtlety hanging in a closet at home. Whilst the books sold in their millions, it left Spillane in the cold with a number of his fellow writers, most famously Anthony Boucher who decried "I, the Jury", stating that it should be "required reading in a Gestapo training school."

As if to strengthen this claim, Hammer certainly took no prisoners. In the first five books that he appeared in, 48 people would die... only 14 of those are not by his hand. Spillane would put together 13 Hammer novels between 1947 and 1996.

Picture solution: The photograph shows a number of "homes", a homonym of Holmes.

Since his first appearance in "A Study in Scarlet" in 1887, Sherlock Holmes, who calls himself a consulting detective and relies on his keen observations, a touch of forensic science and some good old logical reasoning to arrive at his deductions, has become one of the biggest influences on the detective genre. To say otherwise is likely to be pure folly. That's not to say that there weren't detective stories before Holmes, and there were some good ones; Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" (1868), Charles Dickens' "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (1870) and several by Edgar Allan Poe are strong cases in this point. However, after Doyle's protagonist hit the shelves, the genre was inundated with imitators. As Chicago-based author and critic Vincent Starrett, the author of "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1933), described it, "After Holmes, the deluge!"

As if to add weight to this observation, since Sherlock's initial appearance, he has been adapted hundreds of times. He's been parodied, sung about, appeared in films, radio shows, video games and any form of media you could imagine.

Picture solution: No homonym, straight reference to the surname, that is a cross. The detective is Alex Cross.

At the time of writing (2023) James Patterson had created 32 "Alex Cross" novels, two novellas and three novels in a crossover (no pun intended) series that involves Alex's son, Alex Jr.

Cross is a criminal psychologist and detective who works for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC. His wife is killed by an assassin named Jimmy "Hats" Galati, leaving Cross a widower with two children and a grandmother to look after. Patterson endeavours to balance the time Cross has trying to solve crimes with his care for his family. Unfortunately, for Cross, this regularly puts his family, and his future relationships, in the line of fire. This is exemplified in his relationship with Christine Johnson. Despite providing Alex with a third child (Alex Jr.) she leaves him for fear of her own safety.

Picture solution: The photograph is a picture of the "Red Planet", Mars. The detective is Veronica Mars.

The precocious Mars wants to be a detective and helps out her father, the local sheriff, until a scandal forces her father into retirement. This doesn't stop the intrepid Miss Mars as she continues to solve mysteries while trying to clear her father's name. She is helped along the way by Wallace Fennel, a high school misfit. Veronica is blessed with a keen mind and razor-sharp tongue that is laced with sarcasm.

Unlike most of the characters in this quiz, Veronica Mars commenced life as a teen drama on television in 2004. She would progress to other media, such as film and made her first appearance in a novel in 2014. This was "Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line", which Thomas co-wrote with Jennifer Graham.

Picture solution: Dot dot dot dash dash dash... it's MORSE code dear reader, signifying that the person is Detective Chief Inspector Morse.

Inspector Endeavour Morse works for the Central Investigation Department of the Thames Valley Police in Oxford. He is a highly intelligent but somewhat snobbish middle class Englishman. He originally drove a Lancia but, once the television series placed him into a classic Jaguar Mark 2, the novels followed suit. He loves a beer and has a keenness for good whiskey, is fond of opera and poetry and has a passion for crosswords, particularly the cryptic kind. All of these also tend to be favourites of the author as well.

Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse mysteries began in 1975 with "Last Bus to Woodstock". The books, of which there were thirteen in total, were crammed with false leads and red herrings, all designed to leave the reader with a difficult mystery to solve.

Picture solution: It's a spade! The man's name is Sam Spade, not Sam Shovel.

When you mention the name Sam Spade, you automatically think of Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the man in the iconic 1946 version of the film "The Maltese Falcon". Bogart presents Spade as a slightly framed, dark-haired detective who has a no-nonsense approach to solving crime. Now, wipe that image from your consciousness. Hammett's version of the private eye, who first appeared in a serialized version of "The Maltese Falcon" in the pages of "The Black Mask" in 1929, is blond, well-built and tends to play up a fair bit. He even has no qualms about sleeping with his business partner's wife.

"The Maltese Falcon" would be published as a novel in 1930. It would be the only novelization of Spade that Hammett would produce. The success prompted Hammett to churn out the detective in four other short stories but these paled in comparison to the original. That said, "The Maltese Falcon" stands as a classic novel in the genre and Sam Spade as one of its most iconic characters.

Picture solution: That's a lump of coal folks, a homonym for Cole and our detective is Elvis Cole.

Elvis Cole is an unorthodox dude and a detective built for the 1990s. Not only does he bear the name of the "King of Rock n' Roll", Elvis Presley, his life is dotted with consumerism and pop culture references. For example, he wears a Mickey Mouse watch, drinks coffee from a Spiderman mug and has a tendency to quote Jiminy Cricket. But, underestimate him at your peril. The man is a Vietnam War veteran and has channeled his energies into more than one martial art.

Cole first appeared in the 1987 novel "The Monkey Raincoat" where we learn that he does have some qualms about excessive violence, which can get him into trouble at times. Fortunately, he is blessed with an off-sider, an ex-Marine and gun-shop owner, in Joe Pike. Pike declares that "Clint Eastwood talks too much" and has no issues at all with bashing a few heads in.

Robert Crais is a gifted writer who made a name for himself (and earned an Emmy nomination) for his work on television shows such as "Hill Street Blues", "The Equalizer", "Miami Vice" and "Cagney and Lacey". His Elvis Cole novels have led him to winning the prestigious Ross MacDonald Award in 2006 along with a string of Edgars, Shamus Awards and an Anthony.

Picture solution: Two plums on a limb. The detective is Stephanie Plum.

Janet Evanovich started her writing career as an author of romance stories and a fair bit of that experience seeps through into her Stephanie Plum novels. Plum is a bond bailperson, working for her cousin Vinnie in the blue collar region of Trenton in New Jersey. Yes, she is confronted by some nasty people and violence is a part of her resume but, despite this, Evanovich manages to play it for the laughs. She does this with some smart and witty dialogue, such as having Plum describe herself as "Wonder Woman in a B-cup". She goes further to describe her sex life as not having had "a good social orgasm since Reagan was in the White House".

Plum is more than warm for a hunky Vice Squad detective by the name of Joe Morelli who, remarkably, manages to get involved in the majority of Stephanie's cases. She complicates this relationship by also having the hots for a hard-nut Cuban-American bounty hunter named Ranger. Evanovich introduced us to her heroine in 1994 with "One For the Money" and, in 2023, produced the thirtieth book "Dirty Thirty" that showcases the former lingerie buyer, turned bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum.

Picture solution: Sorry, but that is a picture of a wolf, not a dog. The detective is Nero Wolfe.

When someone says the term "private eye", the picture that generally comes to mind is the pavement-pounding gumshoe, who is hard boiled and has the world on his shoulders. Well, Nero Wolfe is none of that. He is an excessively overweight agoraphobe who loves his food (and his beer) and rarely leaves his swanky Manhattan townhouse. He is so shiftless that he will try to convince you that a game of pool is exercise. However, behind that indolence and his smart mouth lies a sharp mind and, with the help of his trusty manservant, Archie Goodwin, who also serves as Nero's "eyes" on the street, he has a happy knack of giving the come-uppance to a series of murderers, blackmailers and kidnappers.

Commencing with "Fer-de-Lance" in 1934, over a period of forty years, Rex Stout would churn out 46 Nero Wolfe tales. The collection "Death Times Three" (1985) was published by Bantam Books, ten years after Stout's passing. It contained the novella "Bitter End" and two other short stories.

Picture solution: That picture is of a statue of a man drawing a bow. They call that an archer and our detective is, accordingly, Lew Archer.

Ross Macdonald is such a highly regarded author that the Santa Barbara Book Council have named an award after him and present it annually to "a California writer whose work raises the standard of literary excellence." His creation, Lew Archer, stands alongside the likes of Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, as private eyes that epitomize the genre.

In Archer, Macdonald presents us with a world weary shamus who's seen enough of the world to know that it is not always a nice or happy place. In "The Drowning Pool" (1950) he informs the daughter of a wealthy businessman, "I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron-hearted". He goes further to inform her, "everybody hates detectives and dentists. We hate them right back."

Despite his days being alone and filled with missing people, sleazy motel rooms, murder, femmes fatales, crooked cops and violence, he is not a tragic figure, nor is he overly unhappy. That said, there appear to be no women in his life and family is rarely mentioned. In Macdonald's stories, Archer is the dark horse and the case tends to rule the novel.