Detecting the Detectives Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jane Marple

Living in the fictitious English village of St. Mary Mead, Miss Jane Marple solves crimes through sharp observation and logical thinking. This endearing character has been played on screen by some of the finest actresses, including Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Geraldine McEwan and, perhaps most memorable of all, Joan Hickson.

Answer: The French Connection

Based on the experiences of real police officers, this hard hitting drama from 1971 is about an attempt to smuggle over $30 million worth of heroin from France to the USA. "Popeye" and his partner "Cloudy" Russo (played by Roy Scheider) learn of the plot and are thrown into action to prevent it from succeeding.

The film includes one of the most spectacular car chases in the cinema with Popeye trying to catch a train on an elevated line in pursuit of a hitman who is trying to escape on the train.

Answer: An orang-utan

Published in 1841, this story used techniques that became common in the writing of mystery stories, such as the narrator being a friend of the detective and the murders taking place in a room locked from the inside. It is about the double murder of a mother and daughter, the mother found in the yard below the window of the fourth floor room and the daughter forced into the chimney of the room. Dupin works out how the criminal could have entered the room and concludes it could not have been done by a human, before identifying the culprit from some hair found at the scene.

The detective also features in two other tales by Poe.

Answer: Helen Mirren

In the series "Prime Suspect", based on novels by Lynda La Plante, Jane Tennison is an ambitious and tough police woman. She has to combat not only crime but the institutional sexism found within the Metropolitan Police Service. However, her abilities help her to gain promotion and respect.

Helen Mirren is one of Britain's finest female actors, her career going back to the 1960s when she was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and including many fine stage, television and big screen performances. She is one of the small number of people to win an Oscar, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award, all for being best actress in leading roles.

Answer: In the Heat of the Night

Watching this amazing film you can almost feel the heat bringing you out in sweat as these two superb actors strike sparks off each other. Norman Jewison's film is based on a novel by John Ball, and deals with the involvement of an African American police officer in investigating a murder in Mississippi and his relationship with a local white police chief. Tensions between them are almost as high as those in the community but Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs shows insight to solve the case and win the respect of the chief played by Rod Steiger. Both were nominated for Oscars, with the award going to Steiger.

Answer: Inspector Clouseau

Peter Sellers brought the bungling Inspector to life for the first time in the film, "The Pink Panther" in 1963. Cato, played by Burt Kwouk, was introduced in the second film in the series, "A Shot in the Dark". The idea behind his random assaults on Clouseau is that, as well as keeping him vigilant, it will improve his martial arts abilities.

The result is hilarious and chaotic. One of the other options, Commissioner Dreyfus, is Clouseau's boss (played by Herbert Lom) whom Clouseau drives mad with his incompetence and who ends up in a mental hospital in more than one film in the series.

Answer: Lisbeth Salander

Lisbeth Salander is the focal character in Larsson's "Millennium" Series, featuring in "The Girl Who Played With Fire", "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" and other titles. An accomplished computer hacker, she carries out assignments for the company Milton Security, which always lead her into deadly danger.

Answer: Botswana

Precious Ramotswe is the central figure in a series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith. She is an intelligent woman with no training but with instincts of fairness and compassion that help her to solve mysteries. The novels address a wide range of issues including the role of women in southern African societies, tensions between belief systems and challenges such as AIDS. By 2019 there were twenty books in the series.

Answer: Paul Drake

Drake was played by William Hopper in the television series in which Raymond Burr played Perry Mason. It was a cliche in the series that Paul Drake would come into the courtroom while Mason was interrogating a witness and pass on critical information that allowed Mason to change his line of questioning and induce the guilty party (sometimes the witness, sometimes another person in the court) to confess to the crime.

It was a predictable turn in the plot but somehow it was always entertaining.

Answer: Nancy Drew

Nancy Drew was invented by the writer Edward Stratemeyer, who also created the Hardy Boys. Initially Stratemeyer came up with plot lines but then hired another writer to convert them into stories. In time, several ghost writers wrote the novels, all using the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.

The first novel, aimed at teenage girls, was a huge success on publication in 1930 and by the end of the year four stories were already in print. There have been many changes to the character and style of the stories over the years but Nancy Drew remained a highly popular series into the 21st century as well as featuring in big screen films, television series and video games.