The gentleman detective is a type of fictional character. He (or, less commonly, she) has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in Britain in the Golden Age. The heroes of these adventures are typically both gentlemen by conduct and also members of the British gentry. The literary heroes being in opposition to professional police force detectives from the working classes.
Gentlemen detectives include amateurs, private detectives and professional policemen. They are always well educated, frequently have unusual or eccentric hobbies, and are commonly found in their natural environment, an English country house. This type of British detective forms a contrast to the less cerebral and more 'hard boiled' style of hero in American crime fiction. See the history of American hardboiled fiction.
Read more about Gentleman Detective: Early Examples, Gentlemen Detectives From The Golden Age, Modern Examples, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words gentleman and/or detective:
“Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow’s scream.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.”
—V.S. (Victor Sawdon)