Solving crimes can be straightforward. First, someone has to commit a crime1, then someone else has to gather the clues, consider their implications, then reveal the identity of the culprit. Not every creator seems satisfied with this approach—a few have even provided their detectives with abilities beyond the human norm.
Marty Hopkirk from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
Private detective Marty Hopkirk is observant enough to realize in the pilot episode that a woman’s seemingly natural death from heart failure was anything but natural. Hopkirk isn’t quite adept enough to avoid tipping his hand to the paid assassin who murdered the unfortunate woman. This results in a fatal hit-and-run for poor Marty.
In the normal run of things, being dead is a tremendous workplace impediment. As a restless ghost, Marty can seek justice…if he can convince grieving fellow detective Jeff Randall that Marty isn’t simply a hallucination. Their success in solving Marty’s murder only brings more cases in which having a ghost on the team proves helpful.
William Henry Murdoch from Murdoch Mysteries
Faced not merely with commonplace mundane crime, Murdoch and the other police at Toronto’s Station House No. 4 must also contend with the American imperialists, illicit tunnelling machines, heavier-than-air flying machines, and the rudimentary orbital craft for which early 20th century Canada was so notorious. Accordingly, polymath Murdoch provides Station House No. 4 with a wide range of useful gadgets, including but not limited to night vision goggles, bulletproof vests, lie detectors, and radio tracking devices, the existence of which in early 20th century Toronto may come as a surprise2 to viewers unfamiliar with the minutiae of Canadian history.
Murdock’s intellectual gifts are not limited to a knack for invention. He possesses the requisite prodigious intellect that all police detectives should possess. Furthermore, his memory is nearly photographic, and his powers of visualization are so well developed that some viewers have speculated what he actually possessed was a limited form of post-cognition.
Louis Ciccone from Seeing Things
Middle-aged, overweight, if not divorced then working hard on becoming divorced, Louis is not much of a detective. In fact, Louis isn’t a detective at all. He is a reporter for the Toronto Gazette, one of Toronto’s many thriving newspapers. However, Louis possesses both a knack for stumbling over injustices that demand redress and sufficient moral character not to look the other way.
Key to Louis’ detecting avocation: limited post-cognition. Louis occasionally has visions of past events. These are enough to hint at what actually happened. Paranormal powers are not considered evidence in Canadian courts. Even if the visions were not often obscure, simply knowing the truth isn’t sufficient proof to satisfy the law. Therefore, Louis (aided by his long-suffering estranged wife Marge) must use his journalistic skills to find mundane evidence that will sway the legal system towards justice.
Hobo from The Littlest Hobo
Long before Jack Reacher began wandering from troubled town to troubled town, Hobo’s nomadic life invariably led him from one small town crisis to another. Canadians perplexed by unforeseen calamities outside their ability to resolve found themselves rescued by the ever-vigilant, ever-helpful Hobo.
Hobo’s most notable special ability was less an asset than a drawback: Hobo is a German Shepherd. Hobo must therefore investigate and intervene without the luxuries of hands or speech. The key to the dog’s remarkable abilities and keen insight into the human condition may lie in something revealed in a two-part episode: Hobo is enormously long-lived, as Hobo featured in the 1963–1966 TV series is apparently the same Hobo as in the 1979–1985 series. It is possible that Hobo is the same Hobo as in the 1958 movie. Is Hobo the helpful canine so experienced because Hobo is immortal? I can’t rule it out.
Yoru Morino from Goth by Otsuichi
Japan as a whole has a low murder rate and few serial killers. Therefore, under normal circumstances someone like Goth’s nameless narrator would have few opportunities to match wits with homicidal maniacs. In the world of the book, however, there is one region (not named) that abounds in vicious killers. There the narrator of this novel can indulge their taste for detection.
Key to the process: a knack not of the narrator’s but the narrator’s best friend, Morino. Morino has two abilities that make her invaluable to any would-be detective. First, for reasons that remain unclear, Morino attracts the homicidally inclined like bees are attracted to flowers. Second, Morino has turned genre-blindness into armor, apparently surviving her frequent brushes with death thanks to her sheer obliviousness.
These are hardly the only examples I could have used. It’s likely I overlooked some of your favourites. Feel free to extol the virtues of your preferred examples in comments below.
- Although The Dog Park Club subverted expectations by never clarifying if the crime the would-be, woefully unqualified investigators hoped to solve had ever occurred. Some readers—me, mainly—thought this was hilarious, but other readers hated it.
- Speaking of surprises: in one episode, supporting character George Crabtree mentions that one of his many aunts moved from Newfoundland to Ontario, was alarmed by Ontario’s abundant moose, and returned to Newfoundland. Surely, thinks I, Newfoundland has lots of moose. It does now, but not at the time the series is set. One of the writers knew that and worked it into the plot. What next, a mystery involving Nova Scotia’s Year of Free Beef? Animal lovers are advised not to drop “Year of Free Beef” into search engines.
