Films and TV Series of Private Investigators
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have been produced in both film and television on numerous occasions. The BBC's recent series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (previously known as Frodo in his impetuous youth) is just the latest example. Well acted and scripted (mostly original material), although I took a strong objection to the final two episodes involving Holmes' evil sister: a character I suspect Doyle would have discarded into the dust bin, and rightfully so.
There have been two other series including the recent Elementary starring Lucy Lieu, glaring as ever.
There have also been at least three movies, with a fourth in development (apparently the producers don't even have a script. Just a name, which is, apparently, sufficient). The most recent two films star Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and likewise the third. I recommend both, and hopefully the sequel will meet those standards. I did have trouble, at first, picturing Jude Law as Dr. Watson. But he grows into the part.
Even before Sherlock Holmes, however, was The Moonstone (1868) featuring a Scotland Yard inspector investigating a stolen diamond of great value, which is regarded as the first published novel of this genre.
The public responded well to this new genre--especially when Sherlock first appeared in 1887.
Then, when Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade was brought to life by Humphrey Bogart, whose portrayal of the taciturn Spade became an archetype of the role in 1941 in John Huston's film version.
Agatha Christie must once again be on top of this list, with her Hercule Poirot books, beginning in 1920. Produced for both film and television.
Actors who have played Poirot on film include: Austin Trevor, John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, Orson Welles, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich.
.
In 1934 Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Thin Man, was released as a film, starring William Powell as P.I. Nick Charles, with Myrna Loy, and Maureen O'Sullivan in the leading female roles.
Another Hammett book, The Maltese Falcon was a major success with Humphrey Bogart on the big screen as Sam Spade, in 1941.
Otto Preminger directed (yes, directed!) the film Laura in 1944, with another all-star cast of was
Murder, My Sweet was a film noir adapted from Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe novel by director Edward Dmytryk in 1944, with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.
Bogart was back in full P.I. form once again as Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep in 1946.
Not to be overlooked was a smaller book and film, The Assassin in 1952. Based on Victor Canning's novel and screenplay, dealing with an assassination plot set in Venice, with Richard Todd, Eva Bartok and John Gregson.
Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer reached the big screen with Kiss Me Deadly in 1955, with Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer.
In 1958 James Stewart and Kim Novak starred in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo, based on the French novel D'Entre Les Morts, by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, in which Stewart's character wrestles with personal demons and a hauntingly beautiful woman.
While not a P.I. per se, Stewart fulfills the role as a retired police detective. No longer on the force, you're private.
Also from 1958:
Badge of Evil is a novel written by Whit Masterson (a pseudonym used by the authors Robert Allison “Bob” Wade and H. Bill Miller)[1] and published in 1956.[2] This novel was the basis for the movie Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles and co-starring Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh.
Ross Macdonald saw his P.I. Lew Harper performed by Paul Newman in 1966's film Harper. As with Jimmy Stewart, anything with Paul Newman is a must-see.
In 1967, Frank Sinatra got the role of private investigator Tony Rome.
Jill St. John also starred, based on the novel by Marvin H. Albert, in which Sinatra plays a tough Miami P.I. who is hired by a wealthy banker to find a gang who stole his daughter's jewelry.
Max and the Junkmen was a 1971 French film based on the novel by Claude Neron, about a Paris P.I. in pursuit of a gang of bank robbers who continue to elude him until he sets a trap only to have the tables turned.
Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe P.I. makes the big screen with The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by Robert Altman, starring Elliot Gould as Marlowe, in which he tries to help out a friend only to become implicated in his wife's murder.
The Seventies were rife with P.I. films. 1974 gave us Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot investigating a Murder on the Orient Express, with an all-star cast directed by Sidney Lumet including Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman (a later remake with Kenneth Branagh as Poirot was not as good, i.m.h.o.).
Paul Newman is back in the role of P.I. Lew Harper in Ross The Drowning Pool (1975) in which Harper travels to the Deep South and wishes he hadn't.
That same year, Raymond Chandler again saw his Phillip Marlowe on the big screen in Farewell, My Lovely. a second, much better adaptation than the original, in which Marlowe is hired to find a missing woman in grave danger, only to find himself in similar straights. This time Robert Mitchum plays the lead.
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot returns to the screen again, in Death on the Nile this time with Peter Ustinov in the lead role. Sort of another Murder on the Orient Express. Except this time on a boat.
In 1982, A year after starring in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford plays the lead in Blade Runner,
This 1982 film was based on Phillip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: a book from the acid era much too complex to offer as an elevator pitch, but deals with a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, in which the surviving humans, struggling to protect the few remaining species of animals and plants, must cope with orders from the powers-that-be to terminate six androids intended as slaves but now obsolete. The Androids, in the meantime, have captured a space ship and returned to Earth to find their maker, led by Rutger Hauer. Directed by Ridley Scott.
Harrison Ford's character is not exactly a P.I., but I couldn't resist including this since it was listed on IMDB's Best Detective Films, from which list I have extrapolated the ones based on books (many of which I've discussed in my blog on P.I. Fiction). He actually plays a bounty hunter, but hey, he's been employed, privately, to investigate the location and intentions of the six escaped androids. OK, and then exterminate them. Which isn't exactly kill them because they're not exactly alive, right?
Tell that to Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but never mind...
Oh, and all this takes place in the Year of Dear Lord 2021. (ufbep)*
1983 had three entries: first and foremost, the return of Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four, with none other than Peter O'Toole as Holmes, based on the novel, in which Holmes is hired to investigate an apparent gift of priceless pearls to a young woman after her father vanishes.
Next came the French film Deadly Circuit (Mortelle Randonnee).
Based on the novel by Marc Behm, it tells the sad tale of an aging lonely P.I., who is sent to track a female serial killer (I think there was only one in the U.S. I know of, and she was pretty boring compared to this one (the American killer worked I-95 in Florida, where she killed truckers who picked her up at rest stops. Totaling 3, I think, which in today's parlance would be the opening scene of a movie). The thickening broth of a plot soon becomes full-recipe soup, in typical (or atypical?) French style.
Also in 1983 Stacy Keach, in what would become his signature role in a subsequent television series appeared as Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, in a made-for-tv movie Murder Me, Murder You in which Mike seeks to avenge his lost love's death and find a missing daughter he never knew he had.
1985 saw the return of Sherlock Holmes, this time in an enjoyable role as a teenager, Young Sherlock Holmes played by Nicholas Rowe, with his classmate John Watson by Alan Cox. Not actually a Conan Doyle book, but I read the film adaptation and enjoyed it very much.
There's just no stopping Sherlock, it seems. The next year the first of several TV series: The Return of Sherlock Holmes. This time with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the respective roles investigating such things as an empty house, an abbey grange, the Musgrave ritual, the prior school, and other nefarious plots and schemes.
Holmes returns once again in 1985 with a sequel series The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, with the same cast of Jeremy Brett, and Edward Hardwicke.
The same gang returns once again the next year with The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Clearly there remained (and still remains, methinks) a strong market for Holmes and Watson.
Also in 1986 Umberto Eco's great novel, The Name of the Rose, is released as a film starring Sean Connery as 14th Century Franciscan Monk William Baskerville (presumably no relation to the Hound) who arrives in Italy from England for a conference, only to discover that several monks have been murdered. Baskerville, in seeking to catch the killer, finds himself at odds with the Church hierarchy.
Writer William Hjortsberg's novel Angel Heart was adapted by Alan Parker in 1987 as a film starring Mickey Rourke, Robert de Niro, and Lisa Bonet. Rourke plays P.I. Harry Angel, who is hired to find a man who doesn't want to be found and gets very nasty about it.
Also in 1987, Sherlock is back on the big screen this time in animation mode, in The Sign of Four. Oh well, at least they got Peter O'Toole for the voice of Holmes.
Plot line from IMDB (the Internet Movie Data Base)
When a woman receives a message apparently from the sender of a series of valuable pearls after the disappearance of her father, Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.
That same year, the regular television cast returns, this time for a TV movie: Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four.
Chester Gould's comic book character Dick Tracy became a major motion picture in 1990, directed by and starring Warren Beatty, with Madonna and Al Pacino.
Come 1989, Agatha is back with a series renewal of Poirot. As before, David Suchet plays the title role with aplomb.
H.P. Lovecraft, like Arthur Conan Doyle, did not live to see his works recreated on film or television.
Sadly many decades too late, in 1991 Lovecraft's short story The Resurrected was finally brought to film as a movie in which a woman hires a P.I. to investigate what her husband is doing in a strange cabin deep in the forest. What ensues is a blend of horror and mystery, when he learns that his mark is following an ancient tradition passed down for centuries in his male paternal line, involving human sacrifice.
For lighter fare, from 1994 the same cast for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson returns once more as a television series, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Rosalie Williams.
That same year brought us an interesting film came out of Eastern Europe, called Happy Birthday, Turke! based on a novel by Jakob Arjouni
From IMDB:
Kemal Kayankaya, a private detective, was hired by a Turkish women, Ilter, to search for his husband, Amend, who has been missing since the death of her father, Vassif. Unknownst to him, he was about to unravel the secrets of his client's family, as well as their various dealings with the underworld and the police. Moreover, being a Turk raised in a German foster family, he has also begun to understand and accept his own ethnicity.
1995 brought us The Turnaround, based on the novel by Mark Timlin: A P.I. regrets taking on a case. So....what else is new? Clive Owen plays the lead.
For a horse of a different color, that same year Denzel Washington plays the lead in Devil in a Blue Dress, Jennifer Beals his opposite. Based on a book by Walter Moseley. Washington plays a P.I. hired to find a missing, whereupon everything is not what it seems...
Jumping ahead to 1998, there was Brown's Requiem, based on the novel by James Ellroy.
From IMDB:
The next year Jeffrey Deaver's novel The Bone Collector is released to the big screen, again starring Denzel Washington as a different P.I., this one a quadriplegic former homicide detective who teams up with Angelina Jolie to track down a serial killer.
In 1999 Washington Irving's classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (a town I remember well, growing up) came to the screen, starring Johnny Depp.
A film from 2001 (not a Space Odyssey this time) The Mothman Prophecies. In this tale the P.I. is an investigative reporter (I have a new series featuring one; they are an endangered species in more ways than one). The setting is rural America, namely West Virginia, which finds itself a second Roswell. Based on the novel by John A. Keel, the film starred Richard Gere as the reporter, who ventures there to investigate bizarre visions and creatures. Roswell II.
Let's jump ahead to 2005 (virtually all shows and films during that interim were police procedurals, or other government agencies (FBI, etc.).
And it's another film from Europe (Italy, this time) to break back onto the screen, based on a novel by Grazia Verasani, titled Quo Vadis, Baby? I like to see a female P.I. for a change, this one investigating the death of her sister many years earlier. A suicide? Or....
Also from 2005 was Third Man Out, a film based on the novel by Richard Stevenson, about a gay detective hired to find out who's been threatening a gay man who's been outing others against their wishes.
2005 had even more to offer: Robert Downey Jr. isn't just Sherlock He appears here in a new P.I. role, as he hooks up with an actress wanna-be, and an actor who's, well, a bad actor. Val Kilmer plays the heavy, in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Bret Halliday wrote the novel.
In 2007, Downey, Jr. is back yet again, this time as a political cartoonist in San Francisco who becomes an amateur detective, determined to track down the Zodiac Killer.
Also from 2007 an Italian film, La Ragazza del Lago (The Girl by the Lake) features a big city detective who is hired to find the killer of a young woman in a small town to the north. From the novel by Karin Fossum.
An author I am particularly fond of, is South African author Alexander McCall Smith, creator of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. In keeping with the time and place (and colorful characters and locations new to most readers in multiple ways) Smith's books (and characters) move at an almost leisurely pace.
From IMDB:
After her father's death, sensible and cheerful Mma Precious Ramotswe sells her inherited cattle and opens the country's only female-owned detective agency. She hires Botswana Secretarial College graduate (97% in the final exams!) Grace Makutsi as her assistant. Together they solve problems big and small with their wisdom, big hearts, and endless cups of red-bush tea. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's best friend, mechanic Mr. JLB Matekoni, hopes for a chance to win her heart... Based on Alexander McCall Smith's best-selling book series.
This BBC television series aired in 2008-9.
In 2009 a German P.I. appears in Der Knochenman (The Bone Man)
investigating a series of poisonings at a restaurant ('Loschenkohl).
From the novel by Wolf Haas.
Also from 2009, in the rather long film title Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 a rookie journalist from Yorkshire investigates the murder of a young schoolgirl--another victim of a possible serial killer. From the novel by David Peace.
(There were two sequels; same title different years).
Again that year, Robert Downey Jr. re-appears as Sherlock Holmes, and again is joined by Jude Law, tangle with a nemesis threatening England herself.
Sherlock himself now jumps forward through a media time machine to present-day London, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, formerly of The Shire, in Sherlock. This was a BBC TV series that ran from 2010 to 2017. I recommend all but the last two episodes with the made-for-TV evil lunatic Holmes sister.
Also beginning in 2010 comes a series I recommend highly: Jack Taylor, based on the novels by Ken Bruen, about a defrocked police detective who is a recovering (barely) alcoholic, which has cost him his job. So he goes private, played by Ian Glen. During the show he grumpily adopts a young associate, who is eagerly considering himself partner.
2010 also brought us the feature film Nobody Else but You from France. I like this plot line: a bestselling mystery writer with writer's block gets desperate, trying to find a fresh plot of his own, and becomes enraptured by the apparent suicide of a strange woman who imagined herself to be Marilyn Monroe reincarnated.
From the novel by Adrian Finkelstein.
2011 brought us an interesting Scottish television series out of Edinburgh: Case Histories, in which a former soldier and police inspector goes private. Based on the Jackson Brodie novel series by Kate Atkinson.
That same year saw Sherlock and Watson back once more, again with the law firm of Downey and Jude Law, in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
As before, I would allow an investigative journalist on this blog, in the case from the great series of Swedish novels by the late, great Stieg Larsson, beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If you haven't read those books (with some excellent new additions from David Lagercrantz bringing the series up to six thus far).
What's tragic is that Larsson died of a heart attack in Stockholm at the age of fifty, and his three Girl books were all published posthumously.
Please note that the cast of the British film of the first book included Daniel Craig and Christopher Plummer.
Hard not to read, then see these books and this movie (assuredly more to follow, they are just too good not to film).
Determined not to skip a year, Sherlock is back yet again, in another present-day setting, this time in New York called Elementary, with Lucy Liu (get this) as Dr. Joan Watson. Sigh. (Also Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes, plus Aidan Quinn. But an American dude with a redneck name as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock? Doyle must be rolling over in his grave. (Sorry, Jonny. I watched you in action and you were ok, but still...).
One does hope, however, that Doyle would have approved of Lucy Liu's characterization. An Asian woman, yet.
Too bad they didn't cast her as Sherlock, though: Shirley Holmes, perhaps? Now that would be progress.
(And if anyone reading this is inspired to put that into production, I'll require my 10%, TYVM ;-)).
But seriously, folks. You can see in this poster that Lucy Liu is the brains of the operation!
Meanwhile, speaking of jumping ahead in time, Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane leaps two and a half centuries forward in time to solve a mystery going back to the Founding Fathers, in the television series Sleepy Hollow.
This series aired from 2013 to 2017.
As nothing further in the world of private (or amateur) investigations derived from books has been produced since 2017 (yet another Sherlock with Downey and Law is in the works for next year) thus ends this long blog, which nonetheless this author hopes the reader has found to be of interest.
Thank you for reading. And do keep on reading: perhaps some of the books I've referenced in this and previous blogs.
Ciao for now,
E.C.
(ufbep: usually followed by an exclamation point).
There have been two other series including the recent Elementary starring Lucy Lieu, glaring as ever.
There have also been at least three movies, with a fourth in development (apparently the producers don't even have a script. Just a name, which is, apparently, sufficient). The most recent two films star Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and likewise the third. I recommend both, and hopefully the sequel will meet those standards. I did have trouble, at first, picturing Jude Law as Dr. Watson. But he grows into the part.
Even before Sherlock Holmes, however, was The Moonstone (1868) featuring a Scotland Yard inspector investigating a stolen diamond of great value, which is regarded as the first published novel of this genre.
The public responded well to this new genre--especially when Sherlock first appeared in 1887.
Then, when Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade was brought to life by Humphrey Bogart, whose portrayal of the taciturn Spade became an archetype of the role in 1941 in John Huston's film version.
Agatha Christie must once again be on top of this list, with her Hercule Poirot books, beginning in 1920. Produced for both film and television.
Actors who have played Poirot on film include: Austin Trevor, John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, Orson Welles, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich.
.In 1934 Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Thin Man, was released as a film, starring William Powell as P.I. Nick Charles, with Myrna Loy, and Maureen O'Sullivan in the leading female roles.
Another Hammett book, The Maltese Falcon was a major success with Humphrey Bogart on the big screen as Sam Spade, in 1941.
Otto Preminger directed (yes, directed!) the film Laura in 1944, with another all-star cast of was
Murder, My Sweet was a film noir adapted from Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe novel by director Edward Dmytryk in 1944, with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.
Bogart was back in full P.I. form once again as Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep in 1946.Not to be overlooked was a smaller book and film, The Assassin in 1952. Based on Victor Canning's novel and screenplay, dealing with an assassination plot set in Venice, with Richard Todd, Eva Bartok and John Gregson.
Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer reached the big screen with Kiss Me Deadly in 1955, with Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer.
In 1958 James Stewart and Kim Novak starred in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo, based on the French novel D'Entre Les Morts, by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, in which Stewart's character wrestles with personal demons and a hauntingly beautiful woman.
While not a P.I. per se, Stewart fulfills the role as a retired police detective. No longer on the force, you're private.
Also from 1958:
Badge of Evil is a novel written by Whit Masterson (a pseudonym used by the authors Robert Allison “Bob” Wade and H. Bill Miller)[1] and published in 1956.[2] This novel was the basis for the movie Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles and co-starring Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh.
Ross Macdonald saw his P.I. Lew Harper performed by Paul Newman in 1966's film Harper. As with Jimmy Stewart, anything with Paul Newman is a must-see.In 1967, Frank Sinatra got the role of private investigator Tony Rome.
Jill St. John also starred, based on the novel by Marvin H. Albert, in which Sinatra plays a tough Miami P.I. who is hired by a wealthy banker to find a gang who stole his daughter's jewelry.
Max and the Junkmen was a 1971 French film based on the novel by Claude Neron, about a Paris P.I. in pursuit of a gang of bank robbers who continue to elude him until he sets a trap only to have the tables turned.
Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe P.I. makes the big screen with The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by Robert Altman, starring Elliot Gould as Marlowe, in which he tries to help out a friend only to become implicated in his wife's murder.
The Seventies were rife with P.I. films. 1974 gave us Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot investigating a Murder on the Orient Express, with an all-star cast directed by Sidney Lumet including Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman (a later remake with Kenneth Branagh as Poirot was not as good, i.m.h.o.).
Paul Newman is back in the role of P.I. Lew Harper in Ross The Drowning Pool (1975) in which Harper travels to the Deep South and wishes he hadn't.
That same year, Raymond Chandler again saw his Phillip Marlowe on the big screen in Farewell, My Lovely. a second, much better adaptation than the original, in which Marlowe is hired to find a missing woman in grave danger, only to find himself in similar straights. This time Robert Mitchum plays the lead.
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot returns to the screen again, in Death on the Nile this time with Peter Ustinov in the lead role. Sort of another Murder on the Orient Express. Except this time on a boat.In 1982, A year after starring in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford plays the lead in Blade Runner,
This 1982 film was based on Phillip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: a book from the acid era much too complex to offer as an elevator pitch, but deals with a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, in which the surviving humans, struggling to protect the few remaining species of animals and plants, must cope with orders from the powers-that-be to terminate six androids intended as slaves but now obsolete. The Androids, in the meantime, have captured a space ship and returned to Earth to find their maker, led by Rutger Hauer. Directed by Ridley Scott.
Harrison Ford's character is not exactly a P.I., but I couldn't resist including this since it was listed on IMDB's Best Detective Films, from which list I have extrapolated the ones based on books (many of which I've discussed in my blog on P.I. Fiction). He actually plays a bounty hunter, but hey, he's been employed, privately, to investigate the location and intentions of the six escaped androids. OK, and then exterminate them. Which isn't exactly kill them because they're not exactly alive, right?
Tell that to Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but never mind...
Oh, and all this takes place in the Year of Dear Lord 2021. (ufbep)*
1983 had three entries: first and foremost, the return of Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four, with none other than Peter O'Toole as Holmes, based on the novel, in which Holmes is hired to investigate an apparent gift of priceless pearls to a young woman after her father vanishes.
Next came the French film Deadly Circuit (Mortelle Randonnee).Based on the novel by Marc Behm, it tells the sad tale of an aging lonely P.I., who is sent to track a female serial killer (I think there was only one in the U.S. I know of, and she was pretty boring compared to this one (the American killer worked I-95 in Florida, where she killed truckers who picked her up at rest stops. Totaling 3, I think, which in today's parlance would be the opening scene of a movie). The thickening broth of a plot soon becomes full-recipe soup, in typical (or atypical?) French style.
Also in 1983 Stacy Keach, in what would become his signature role in a subsequent television series appeared as Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, in a made-for-tv movie Murder Me, Murder You in which Mike seeks to avenge his lost love's death and find a missing daughter he never knew he had.1985 saw the return of Sherlock Holmes, this time in an enjoyable role as a teenager, Young Sherlock Holmes played by Nicholas Rowe, with his classmate John Watson by Alan Cox. Not actually a Conan Doyle book, but I read the film adaptation and enjoyed it very much.There's just no stopping Sherlock, it seems. The next year the first of several TV series: The Return of Sherlock Holmes. This time with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the respective roles investigating such things as an empty house, an abbey grange, the Musgrave ritual, the prior school, and other nefarious plots and schemes.
Holmes returns once again in 1985 with a sequel series The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, with the same cast of Jeremy Brett, and Edward Hardwicke.The same gang returns once again the next year with The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Clearly there remained (and still remains, methinks) a strong market for Holmes and Watson.
Writer William Hjortsberg's novel Angel Heart was adapted by Alan Parker in 1987 as a film starring Mickey Rourke, Robert de Niro, and Lisa Bonet. Rourke plays P.I. Harry Angel, who is hired to find a man who doesn't want to be found and gets very nasty about it.
Also in 1987, Sherlock is back on the big screen this time in animation mode, in The Sign of Four. Oh well, at least they got Peter O'Toole for the voice of Holmes.
Plot line from IMDB (the Internet Movie Data Base)
When a woman receives a message apparently from the sender of a series of valuable pearls after the disappearance of her father, Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.
That same year, the regular television cast returns, this time for a TV movie: Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four.
Chester Gould's comic book character Dick Tracy became a major motion picture in 1990, directed by and starring Warren Beatty, with Madonna and Al Pacino.
Come 1989, Agatha is back with a series renewal of Poirot. As before, David Suchet plays the title role with aplomb.
H.P. Lovecraft, like Arthur Conan Doyle, did not live to see his works recreated on film or television.
Sadly many decades too late, in 1991 Lovecraft's short story The Resurrected was finally brought to film as a movie in which a woman hires a P.I. to investigate what her husband is doing in a strange cabin deep in the forest. What ensues is a blend of horror and mystery, when he learns that his mark is following an ancient tradition passed down for centuries in his male paternal line, involving human sacrifice.
For lighter fare, from 1994 the same cast for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson returns once more as a television series, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Rosalie Williams.
That same year brought us an interesting film came out of Eastern Europe, called Happy Birthday, Turke! based on a novel by Jakob Arjouni
From IMDB:
Kemal Kayankaya, a private detective, was hired by a Turkish women, Ilter, to search for his husband, Amend, who has been missing since the death of her father, Vassif. Unknownst to him, he was about to unravel the secrets of his client's family, as well as their various dealings with the underworld and the police. Moreover, being a Turk raised in a German foster family, he has also begun to understand and accept his own ethnicity.1995 brought us The Turnaround, based on the novel by Mark Timlin: A P.I. regrets taking on a case. So....what else is new? Clive Owen plays the lead.
For a horse of a different color, that same year Denzel Washington plays the lead in Devil in a Blue Dress, Jennifer Beals his opposite. Based on a book by Walter Moseley. Washington plays a P.I. hired to find a missing, whereupon everything is not what it seems...
Jumping ahead to 1998, there was Brown's Requiem, based on the novel by James Ellroy.
From IMDB:
The next year Jeffrey Deaver's novel The Bone Collector is released to the big screen, again starring Denzel Washington as a different P.I., this one a quadriplegic former homicide detective who teams up with Angelina Jolie to track down a serial killer.
In 1999 Washington Irving's classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (a town I remember well, growing up) came to the screen, starring Johnny Depp.
A film from 2001 (not a Space Odyssey this time) The Mothman Prophecies. In this tale the P.I. is an investigative reporter (I have a new series featuring one; they are an endangered species in more ways than one). The setting is rural America, namely West Virginia, which finds itself a second Roswell. Based on the novel by John A. Keel, the film starred Richard Gere as the reporter, who ventures there to investigate bizarre visions and creatures. Roswell II.Let's jump ahead to 2005 (virtually all shows and films during that interim were police procedurals, or other government agencies (FBI, etc.).And it's another film from Europe (Italy, this time) to break back onto the screen, based on a novel by Grazia Verasani, titled Quo Vadis, Baby? I like to see a female P.I. for a change, this one investigating the death of her sister many years earlier. A suicide? Or....
Also from 2005 was Third Man Out, a film based on the novel by Richard Stevenson, about a gay detective hired to find out who's been threatening a gay man who's been outing others against their wishes.2005 had even more to offer: Robert Downey Jr. isn't just Sherlock He appears here in a new P.I. role, as he hooks up with an actress wanna-be, and an actor who's, well, a bad actor. Val Kilmer plays the heavy, in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Bret Halliday wrote the novel.
In 2007, Downey, Jr. is back yet again, this time as a political cartoonist in San Francisco who becomes an amateur detective, determined to track down the Zodiac Killer.Also from 2007 an Italian film, La Ragazza del Lago (The Girl by the Lake) features a big city detective who is hired to find the killer of a young woman in a small town to the north. From the novel by Karin Fossum.
An author I am particularly fond of, is South African author Alexander McCall Smith, creator of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. In keeping with the time and place (and colorful characters and locations new to most readers in multiple ways) Smith's books (and characters) move at an almost leisurely pace.
From IMDB:After her father's death, sensible and cheerful Mma Precious Ramotswe sells her inherited cattle and opens the country's only female-owned detective agency. She hires Botswana Secretarial College graduate (97% in the final exams!) Grace Makutsi as her assistant. Together they solve problems big and small with their wisdom, big hearts, and endless cups of red-bush tea. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's best friend, mechanic Mr. JLB Matekoni, hopes for a chance to win her heart... Based on Alexander McCall Smith's best-selling book series.
This BBC television series aired in 2008-9.
In 2009 a German P.I. appears in Der Knochenman (The Bone Man)
investigating a series of poisonings at a restaurant ('Loschenkohl).
From the novel by Wolf Haas.
Also from 2009, in the rather long film title Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 a rookie journalist from Yorkshire investigates the murder of a young schoolgirl--another victim of a possible serial killer. From the novel by David Peace.(There were two sequels; same title different years).
Again that year, Robert Downey Jr. re-appears as Sherlock Holmes, and again is joined by Jude Law, tangle with a nemesis threatening England herself.
Sherlock himself now jumps forward through a media time machine to present-day London, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, formerly of The Shire, in Sherlock. This was a BBC TV series that ran from 2010 to 2017. I recommend all but the last two episodes with the made-for-TV evil lunatic Holmes sister.Also beginning in 2010 comes a series I recommend highly: Jack Taylor, based on the novels by Ken Bruen, about a defrocked police detective who is a recovering (barely) alcoholic, which has cost him his job. So he goes private, played by Ian Glen. During the show he grumpily adopts a young associate, who is eagerly considering himself partner.
2010 also brought us the feature film Nobody Else but You from France. I like this plot line: a bestselling mystery writer with writer's block gets desperate, trying to find a fresh plot of his own, and becomes enraptured by the apparent suicide of a strange woman who imagined herself to be Marilyn Monroe reincarnated.From the novel by Adrian Finkelstein.
2011 brought us an interesting Scottish television series out of Edinburgh: Case Histories, in which a former soldier and police inspector goes private. Based on the Jackson Brodie novel series by Kate Atkinson.
That same year saw Sherlock and Watson back once more, again with the law firm of Downey and Jude Law, in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
As before, I would allow an investigative journalist on this blog, in the case from the great series of Swedish novels by the late, great Stieg Larsson, beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If you haven't read those books (with some excellent new additions from David Lagercrantz bringing the series up to six thus far).
What's tragic is that Larsson died of a heart attack in Stockholm at the age of fifty, and his three Girl books were all published posthumously.
Please note that the cast of the British film of the first book included Daniel Craig and Christopher Plummer.
Hard not to read, then see these books and this movie (assuredly more to follow, they are just too good not to film).
Determined not to skip a year, Sherlock is back yet again, in another present-day setting, this time in New York called Elementary, with Lucy Liu (get this) as Dr. Joan Watson. Sigh. (Also Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes, plus Aidan Quinn. But an American dude with a redneck name as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock? Doyle must be rolling over in his grave. (Sorry, Jonny. I watched you in action and you were ok, but still...).
One does hope, however, that Doyle would have approved of Lucy Liu's characterization. An Asian woman, yet.
Too bad they didn't cast her as Sherlock, though: Shirley Holmes, perhaps? Now that would be progress.
(And if anyone reading this is inspired to put that into production, I'll require my 10%, TYVM ;-)).
But seriously, folks. You can see in this poster that Lucy Liu is the brains of the operation!
Meanwhile, speaking of jumping ahead in time, Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane leaps two and a half centuries forward in time to solve a mystery going back to the Founding Fathers, in the television series Sleepy Hollow.This series aired from 2013 to 2017.
As nothing further in the world of private (or amateur) investigations derived from books has been produced since 2017 (yet another Sherlock with Downey and Law is in the works for next year) thus ends this long blog, which nonetheless this author hopes the reader has found to be of interest.
Thank you for reading. And do keep on reading: perhaps some of the books I've referenced in this and previous blogs.
Ciao for now,
E.C.
(ufbep: usually followed by an exclamation point).
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