Identifying Trait of the Detective Quiz

Answer: Amputee

Cormoran Strike is the protagonist in J. K. Rowling's mystery series written under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. Strike is a large man, a powerful former soldier, who lost the lower part of his right leg during action in Afghanistan. His cumbersome movements limit what he can do, and he is forced to rely upon his assistant Robin Ellacott to perform much of his field work.

While this does not force him into the same position as Nero Wolfe, it makes him rely more than the usual detective on information brought to him by Robin and his other assistants.

Answer: Orchid grower

Nero Wolfe is an eccentric and very obese detective in stories written by Rex Stout. Wolfe has a murky past, born in Montenegro and apparently a soldier in World War I, before immigrating to the United States. He lives in a brownstone in New York City with an elevator and a rooftop greenhouse.

Wolfe leaves his apartment only under most unusual circumstances, employing a renowned chef and tending his own gardens. He is an avid orchid grower, supposedly with over 10,000 plants to cultivate and care for. His associate Archie Goodwin, while unable to resolve mysteries himself, is adept at fieldwork which provides Wolfe with the information he needs to solve cases.

The author, Rex Stout, provides the ultimate challenge to the armchair detective since Wolfe receives the same information as the reader and must solve the mystery based on the same data.

Answer: Rabbi

David Small is the hero of a series of books by Harry Kemelman. Small is the rabbi for the fictional town of Barnard's Crossing, Massachusetts.

The plots usually involve members of his congregation or the Jewish community in his area, who become involved in a crime. Very often a subplot involves Rabbi Small having to deal with discontented members of his own congregation, who disagree with his strict observance of Talmudic tradition and seek to replace him. In many of these cases, the rabbi resolves accusations against these powerful members of his temple and is able to keep his position due to their gratitude.

Answer: Bounty Hunter

Stephanie Plum is the heroine of a series of novels by Janet Evanovich, with each title containing the number of the book in the series. In search of a job after completing school, Stephanie finds a job working for her cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman in New Jersey. Plum's job is to track down people who fail to appear in court after Vinnie has paid their bail. In this role of "bounty hunter" Stephanie has to track down the bail jumper and invariably gets involved in solving other crimes.

Evanovich has a rich set of characters in Plum's Italian-Hungarian family, allies and nemeses at work, and two competing love interests (policeman Joe Morelli and the mysterious Ranger).

Answer: Busybody

Jane Marple is an elderly spinster living in the small village of St. Mary Mead in several of Agatha Christie's novels. She has the uncanny ability to characterize people and events with her experiences in St Mary Mead. Initially Christie made Marple as a very nosy and somewhat mean old lady. But later she softened her character up to make her aware of everything that transpired in the village.

Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries show the analytic side of detection with his ability to find inconsistencies and missing information in testimony and to filter out irrelevant pieces of informant. On the other side, Jane Marple is able to solve mysteries by analyzing the characters of the people involved.

Answer: Archaeologist

Amelia Peabody is an archaeologist in Elizabeth Peters' series of novels, which were set in Egypt at various times starting in 1884. Peabody, her husband Radcliffe Emerson, and their son Ramses live in England but have a yearly dig in Egypt. Murder and mayhem seem to occur regularly during their expeditions, and the family works with local authorities to resolve mysterious events and murders.

Answer: Drug addict

Sherlock Holmes is probably the most well-known detective in literature and the prototype for many later incarnations of the detective. Most of the tools in modern crime solving didn't exist in the Victorian times of Holmes, and his powers of deduction and arcane knowledge were essential to solving the mysteries.

Conan Doyle was rather inconsistent throughout the Holmes books about the skills and interests of Holmes. He demonstrated forensic science skills about analyzing trace evidence, such as what part of London dirt came from, footprint analysis, identifying tobacco, gunpowder composition, and handwriting identification.

Holmes used morphine and cocaine, especially when he lacked the stimulation of a case. Although Doctor Watson attempted to wean Holmes of the habit, he would still relapse.

Answer: Sports agent

Myron Bolitar is the protagonist of a series of books by Harlan Coben. In the series Bolitar was a highly-recruited basketball player, who won two national championships at Duke University. He was the eighth pick in the NBA draft, but his career ended in a pre-season game due to a serious knee injury.

Bolitar then gained a prestigious law degree from Harvard and opened a sports agency to assist athletes with contract negotiation and investments. When his clients or their families become involved in murder cases, they often turn to Bolitar to help them.

Answer: Final Jeopardy question

Alexandra Cooper is a Manhattan, New York prosecutor in a series of books by Linda Fairstein. Cooper works in the sex-crimes unit, a position that the author herself once held. Alex becomes very involved in solving the crimes with the police detectives, Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace.

There are continuing elements to the books in the series. Cooper is a wealthy socialite due to her father's medical invention; and she maintains a vacation home on Martha's Vineyard. She has a series of long-distance romances with debonair men and uses ballet training to relieve stress.

The stories themselves are centered on obscure areas of New York City and provide a wealth of historical background.

A unique twist to her relationship with Chapman and Wallace is that each story is punctuated with a moment when they watch the Final Jeopardy question from the popular TV quiz show "Jeopardy!". They each bet on who can successfully answer the question, and invariably Chapman wins due to his knowledge of history and military matters.

Answer: Moustache

Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, in Agatha Christie's novels, had a pompous look in keeping with his self-importance. He was quite short and very fastidious in his appearance from his perfectly-shined shoes to his head. His moustache and his concern about how it looked became one of his trademarks, along with his little gray matter.

The moustache itself changed over the course of Christie's novels from a stiff, military appearance on his debut to more luxuriant and distinctive one in later books. He was known to visit hairdressers on occasion to fashion his moustache and became rather arrogant about its look, demeaning others with less exquisite ones.

Answer: Murder Club Group

Lindsay Boxer is the main character of the novel series "Women's Murder Club" written by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. The series is based on fictional characters and police cases in San Francisco.

Boxer became Chief of Homicide in one of the earlier books in the series. She formed an unofficial group of four women, known as the Murder Club Group, to provide a different view of ongoing and cold cases. The first member of the group was her best friend Claire Washburn, a forensic pathologist. A new friend, reporter Cindy Thomas, is the second member. The final member was a prosecuting attorney, Jill Bernhart-Mayer, until she was murdered and then Yuki Castellano as a replacement.

Answer: Victorian high society

Thomas Pitt is the protagonist in a series of books by Anne Perry. Set in Victorian London, the series traces the rise of Pitt from a policeman of low social standing to the Head of the Special Branch with deep connections to the elite stratum of society.

He was the son of the gamekeeper at an estate, but was educated alongside the lord's son. He met his future wife Charlotte in the initial book while investigating the murder of her sister. Charlotte's family was an upper class family with limited finances; but she had connections to members of the upper class. These connections allowed Pitt to become the "policeman of choice" when crimes touched high society; especially since police were regarded as lower class.

Answer: Houseboat

Travis McGee is the hero of a series of mystery novels by John MacDonald. McGee lives on a houseboat named the Busted Flush, the payoff in a poker game he won. He also drives a 1936 Rolls Royce, which had been converted to a pickup truck. Semi-retired, he works in the "salvage business" only when he needs to fund his debonair beach-bum lifestyle.

The author, John MacDonald, also used a trademark style in the books by using a color as part of the title, such as "The Turquoise Lament".

Answer: US National Parks

Anna Pigeon is the protagonist in a series of mystery books written by Nevada Barr. In the series Anna is a park ranger, an occupation once performed by Barr herself. Many of the parks and public areas are less well-known to the general public, such as Natchez Trace and Isle Royale.

Besides providing an entertaining mystery, the stories often describe the history, highlights, and charms of these national parks.

Answer: Post-traumatic stress from WWI

Ian Rutledge is the hero of a series of novels written by the mother and son combination of Caroline and Charles Todd. The books tell the story of Rutledge after his return to Scotland Yard from World War I. During the war he was forced to execute a beloved compatriot, Hamish Macleod, for disobeying an order to start another hopeless attack. Buried below Hamish's corpse and saved by the air pocket it created, Rutledge suffers from a severe and continuing case of shell shock.

Due to the public stigma of PTSD and other mental issues, Rutledge is forced to hide his struggles from his fellow policemen. All the while he keeps hearing the voice of Hamish in his head at most inopportune times while attempting to solve crimes.

The Todds are also authors of the Bess Crawford series about a nurse during World War I.