Quirky Dicks

Don’t be alarmed by the title. For those of you who googled the term, looking for, um, something else, sorry, and good luck on your search. I guess.

For the rest of you, no, it’s not the name of my new thrash metal band. (Does thrash metal even exist anymore? I’ll have to check with Jem, my resident expert on such matters.)

No these are the detective brand of dicks; honestly, I was just trying to get your attention. Didn’t mean to toy with you. So to speak….

In my mind, all the best sleuths are oddballs, and I’m not quite sure why that is. They all share super intelligence, although it is sometimes masked by other attributes.

With Monk, it’s his obsessive compulsive disorder, with which he actively has to struggle in order to solve crimes, often to good comedic effect. Theo Kojak has the visual quirkiness. He’s a smooth-talking character, who dresses to a tee, has a bald head and sucks on the ubiquitous lollipop. He’s also got that quirky tagline that you can’t help but dig: “Who loves ya, baby?”

Poirot has that moustache and air of superiority. Holmes is, well, Holmes. He’s the prototype. The hat, the pipe, the drug habit. Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey’s reimagined 2010 version is pretty exciting, if a bit radical in its departure from what we’re used to thinking of when we think of the iconic Basil Rathbone Holmes.

I’ve saved my favorite for last. What Peter Falk did with the character of Lieutenant Columbo is a feat of brilliance, so much so, in fact, that he pretty much doomed himself to being forever associated with that character. When fans call out to Falk in the streets, wherever he goes in the world, they don’t call out for Falk, they call out for Columbo.

Columbo’s genius is in the way he traps the suspect by making him think himself superior to the detective. That show turned the genre on its ear by taking a huge risk. They revealed the murderer in the first act of each episode, and then allowed the audience to watch as Columbo unraveled the mystery. Although every plotline is nearly identical, the writing and direction is at such a high level that it works. That show captivated me as a boy, and it still captivates me as an adult. Like Sherlock Holmes, Columbo is a master of the art of deduction and observation. My theory is that he knows who the murderer is in the first five minutes of meeting him; the rest is just a question of manipulating him into being caught.

I’m sure there are many I’m leaving out. I am currently reading the second Stieg Larsson book, and I enjoyed the first one. I could see Lizbeth Salander becoming an iconic crime fighter eventually.

What about you? Now that I got your attention with the title, who’s your favorite “quirky dick”?

Hey, it could have been worse. I could’ve said “favorite,” but then my wife would have worried….