98 Fun Facts About Mystery

Which 1841 story is considered the first modern detective story?

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841, is the 'tale of ratiocination' in which the killer turns out to be an escaped orangutan.

What is the name of the Parisian amateur detective in 'The Purloined Letter', an ancestor of Sherlock Holmes?

C. Auguste Dupin appears in only three stories, beginning in 1841, and like Holmes later seems able to read his companion's mind.

What is Wilkie Collins's 1868 novel about a stolen Indian diamond, an early template for the detective novel?

The Moonstone's hero, Franklin Blake, turns out to have taken the diamond himself, unknowingly, after a doctor secretly dosed him with laudanum.

In which 1887 novel did Sherlock Holmes first appear?

A Study in Scarlet appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887, and Conan Doyle had sold all rights to it for just £25.

Which Sherlock Holmes short story introduces Irene Adler, the woman who outwits the detective?

A Scandal in Bohemia ends with Adler outwitting Holmes and fleeing with the King of Bohemia's photograph; ever after, Holmes calls her simply 'the woman'.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is set largely on which English moor?

Dartmoor in Devon is the setting; Conan Doyle had killed Holmes off in 1893, so this 1901 serial brought him back by setting the case before his death.

Which novel, Agatha Christie's first, introduced her detective Hercule Poirot?

The Mysterious Affair at Styles began as a dare from Christie's sister Madge, and its poisoning drew on Christie's wartime work in a hospital dispensary.

Hercule Poirot, Christie's Belgian detective, credits his success to what?

His little grey cells served Poirot to the last: when Curtain killed him off in 1975, The New York Times gave him a front-page obituary.

In which fictional English village does Miss Marple live?

Miss Marple lives in St Mary Mead, the village whose gossip and small crimes she reads as parallels to murder; her first novel was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

Which Christie novel, set on an island off Devon, is the world's best-selling mystery novel?

And Then There Were None has sold over 100 million copies; ten strangers lured to the island are killed one by one, each death matching a verse of a nursery rhyme.

Under what title was Poirot's snowbound-train novel first published in the US in 1934?

Murder in the Calais Coach was the US title because Graham Greene's Stamboul Train had already come out there as Orient Express.

Which Agatha Christie play holds the record for the longest run of any play in the world?

The Mousetrap began as Three Blind Mice, a 1947 radio play Christie wrote for Queen Mary, and was renamed because a West End play already had that title.

Which actor, later a film director and life peer, was the original Detective Sergeant Trotter in Christie's 1952 play?

Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim took a 10% share of the play's profits, which he later sold off, partly to keep Gandhi afloat.

Who played Poirot in all 70 episodes of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot from 1989 to 2013?

David Suchet prepared for the role by reading Christie's Poirot novels and stories and noting down the detective's characteristics and habits.

Who wrote the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and the initiation oath of the Detection Club?

Dorothy L. Sayers created Lord Peter Wimsey in Whose Body? (1923) and introduced Harriet Vane in Strong Poison (1930); Harriet refuses Wimsey's proposals until Gaudy Night (1935).

Who was the first president of the Detection Club, founded in 1930?

G. K. Chesterton, creator of Father Brown, served as the Detection Club's first president from its founding in 1930 until his death in 1936.

Christie, Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh are collectively known as what?

The Queens of Crime included Christie, whose 1926 disappearance set off a search by over 1,000 police and 15,000 volunteers until she was found at a Harrogate hotel.

The priest-detective Father Brown was loosely based on whom?

A real Bradford parish cleric, Father John O'Connor, was the model for Father Brown, and in 1922 he received the author into the Catholic Church.

Which pulp magazine first published Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's early stories?

Black Mask was launched in 1920 by the critics H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan to bankroll their literary magazine, The Smart Set.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe first appeared under that name in which 1939 novel?

The Big Sleep, whose title is a euphemism for death, introduced Marlowe in 1939; Chandler turned to crime writing at 44 after losing his oil-company job.

Dashiell Hammett created Sam Spade and which married sleuthing couple from The Thin Man?

Nick and Nora Charles star in The Thin Man, whose title really means the missing inventor Clyde Wynant, yet all five film sequels kept 'Thin Man' in their titles.

Nancy Drew books are published under which collective pseudonym?

Carolyn Keene was a house name: Mildred Wirt Benson ghostwrote most early Nancy Drew books, and her 1980 court testimony revealed her authorship to the public.

Frank and Joe, sons of detective Fenton, solve crimes in which long-running children's book series?

The Hardy Boys' first 38 books were rewritten from 1959 to modernise the text and remove racial stereotypes that parents had complained about.

Boy detective Leroy Brown is better known by what nickname?

Encyclopedia Brown's cases stop before the solution, so readers can crack each one themselves and check the answers at the back of the book.

Which actor played Erle Stanley Gardner's lawyer Perry Mason in the CBS series that ran from 1957 to 1966?

Raymond Burr first read for the prosecutor Hamilton Burger, but was told he was perfect for Mason if he slimmed down, so he crash-dieted for a month and won the lead.

What does Rex Stout's armchair detective Nero Wolfe tend in his New York brownstone?

Orchids get Nero Wolfe's fixed hours, 9 to 11 each morning and 4 to 6 each afternoon, and clients must fit around that schedule.

Ellery Queen was both a detective and the pseudonym of which two cousins?

Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee won a 1928 mystery-novel contest, but the sponsor folded before paying; a publisher printed their entry, The Roman Hat Mystery, anyway.

Which accessory is Georges Simenon's detective Commissaire Maigret famous for?

A pipe is Maigret's trademark, and Simenon began one of the first novels featuring him in Delfzijl while his boat was repaired; a Maigret statue went up there in 1966.

Which Umberto Eco novel follows the friar William of Baskerville as he investigates deaths in a medieval abbey?

The Name of the Rose's William of Baskerville nods to Sherlock Holmes, and the killer poisons a book's pages, knowing monks lick their fingers to turn them.

What is the name of Sherlock Holmes's landlady at 221B Baker Street?

Mrs Hudson is the long-suffering landlady of 221B Baker Street, enduring Holmes's indoor pistol practice and chemical experiments while bringing up breakfasts and clients.

The Mystery Writers of America's annual awards are named after which author?

Edgar Allan Poe names the Edgars, and in 2018 the Mystery Writers of America made Linda Fairstein a Grand Master, then withdrew the honour two days later amid a furor over the Central Park Five case.

Cluedo, known as Clue in North America, was devised during Second World War air raids by which English musician?

Anthony E. Pratt called his game Murder; Waddingtons renamed it Cluedo, blending 'clue' with Ludo, and North America, where Ludo was little known, made it Clue.

Which battered car does Lieutenant Columbo drive?

A Peugeot 403 convertible, battered and chosen by Peter Falk himself, suits Columbo, whose shabby raincoat also came from Falk's own wardrobe.

Which catchphrase belongs to Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo?

Just one more thing was never planned: with a scene too short and no wish to retype it, creators Levinson and Link sent Columbo back through the door.

What is the name of the van in Scooby-Doo?

The Mystery Machine is the gang's flower-painted van; Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created the show for Hanna-Barbera in 1969, and the culprit is usually a very human one.

Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse is famous for his Jaguar Mark 2, his opera, and which puzzle habit?

Cryptic crosswords were Colin Dexter's own passion: he set them for The Oxford Times and named Morse after Sir Jeremy Morse, a rival solver.

Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels are set mostly in which city?

Edinburgh's respectable and criminal faces run through the series: Ian Rankin wrote the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, as a modern Jekyll and Hyde.

Henning Mankell's detective Kurt Wallander works in which Swedish town?

Wallander works for the Ystad police in Skåne, southern Sweden; he was played by Rolf Lassgård, Krister Henriksson, Adam Pålsson and, in English, Kenneth Branagh.

The Da Vinci Code opens with a murder in which museum?

The Louvre is where the dying curator Jacques Saunière arranges his body like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, leaving clues that pull Robert Langdon in.

What is the literal English translation of the original Swedish title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Men Who Hate Women is the literal meaning of Män som hatar kvinnor; Stieg Larsson died in 2004, before any of his Millennium novels had been published.

Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club is set in what kind of place?

Coopers Chase, the Kent retirement village where Elizabeth, Ron, Joyce and Ibrahim meet on Thursdays, is where they investigate a property developer's murder.

Sue Grafton's 'alphabet' novels, from A Is for Alibi, feature which private investigator?

Kinsey Millhone's alphabet series stops at Y: Sue Grafton died in 2017 with 25 books written, so there is no Z.

Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is set in which country?

Mma Precious Ramotswe opens her agency in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, with the proceeds of her late father's cattle.

Only Murders in the Building is set in which Manhattan apartment building?

The Arconia is fictional: the real Belnord on West 86th Street stands in for it, and inside, three neighbours turn a murder into a true-crime podcast.

Broadchurch, the ITV drama with David Tennant and Olivia Colman, is set on the coast of which county?

Dorset's West Bay, whose cliff and harbour were among Broadchurch's filming locations, saw visitor numbers rise after the series aired.

'The Three Apples', an early murder-mystery tale, appears in which story collection?

In One Thousand and One Nights, the vizier Ja'far is ordered to find a woman's killer within three days; the case is cracked only when the murderer confesses.

Which English Catholic priest codified a 'Decalogue' of rules for detective fiction in 1929?

Ronald Knox also broadcast a fake 1926 BBC radio report of revolution in London, a hoax that may have helped inspire Orson Welles's War of the Worlds.

Émile Gaboriau, creator of the detective Monsieur Lecoq, pioneered detective fiction in which country?

France was Émile Gaboriau's home, and he drew Monsieur Lecoq partly from Vidocq, the criminal who rose to head the French security police.

Which superhero made his debut in 1939 in issue 27 of the comic book Detective Comics?

Batman, the work of writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, is not the comic's only legacy: the publisher DC takes its initials from Detective Comics.

Which comic actor played the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau in the 1963 film The Pink Panther?

Peter Sellers stepped in only after Peter Ustinov quit the role. The Pink Panther of the title is no cat: it is a diamond with a flaw shaped like a leaping panther.

Agatha Christie picked up her knowledge of poisons through wartime work in what kind of place?

A hospital dispensary taught her the trade in both world wars. Her descriptions were so exact that in 1977 British medical staff solved a real thallium poisoning after recognising the symptoms from her book.

The kidnapping plot behind Murder on the Orient Express was inspired by the 1932 abduction of which aviator's son?

Charles Lindbergh's infant son was taken for ransom in 1932, and Christie turned the case into the Armstrong kidnapping in her novel just two years later.

Which novelist died in 1870 with The Mystery of Edwin Drood half written and its solution unknown?

Charles Dickens had finished only six of twelve planned instalments. His friend John Forster said the plan was for the uncle, choirmaster John Jasper, to be the killer.

Which bestselling author was unmasked in 2013 as Robert Galbraith, writer of the Cormoran Strike detective novels?

J. K. Rowling was revealed as the author three months after The Cuckoo's Calling appeared, and the novel leapt from 4,709th place to number one on Amazon.

Which hobby does Sherlock Holmes take up after retiring to a small farm on the Sussex Downs?

Beekeeping fills his days until His Last Bow, when the prime minister coaxes him back to work to trap a German spy on the eve of the First World War.

Which British rock band performs the theme song of the forensic drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation?

The Who provide it with Who Are You, written by Pete Townshend, and the franchise stuck with the band: the spin-off series open with remixes of its songs too.

Which James Bond actor plays the private detective Benoit Blanc in the whodunit film Knives Out?

Daniel Craig leads the ensemble as Blanc, a sleuth director Rian Johnson built from his childhood love of Agatha Christie film adaptations.

Which 1990 TV series opens with homecoming queen Laura Palmer found dead and wrapped in plastic?

Twin Peaks kept its killer hidden into a second season, and David Lynch blamed pressure from the network for solving the Palmer case too soon.

In Murder, She Wrote, novelist Jessica Fletcher lives in Cabot Cove, a fictional town in which US state?

Maine is home to Cabot Cove, though its exteriors were filmed in Mendocino, California. Bodies turned up there so often that the pattern was nicknamed Cabot Cove syndrome.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, what confines James Stewart's photographer to his apartment, watching the neighbours?

A broken leg has him in a cast from hip to foot in his Greenwich Village flat. The 2007 thriller Disturbia borrowed the idea, with its hero stuck at home under house arrest instead.

At which Swiss waterfall did Arthur Conan Doyle send Sherlock Holmes to his apparent death in 1893?

Reichenbach Falls was meant to finish Holmes for good, but some 20,000 readers reportedly cancelled their Strand Magazine subscriptions, and Conan Doyle revived him a decade later.

Glass Onion, the 2022 sequel to Knives Out, borrows its title from a song by which band?

The Beatles are all over the film, not just its title: the set hides glass sculptures of a walrus and of strawberries, nods to two more of the band's songs.

What breed of dog is Scooby-Doo, the easily spooked cartoon companion of amateur detective Shaggy Rogers?

Great Dane was not a sure thing: in early drafts, when the show was called Mysteries Five, he was a bongo-playing dog named Too Much who might have been a sheepdog.

In Only Murders in the Building, how do the three amateur sleuths share their investigation with the public?

A podcast, itself titled Only Murders in the Building, is what unites the neighbours played by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez: all three are true-crime fans.

In the social deduction game Among Us, what are the secret killers hiding among the Crewmates called?

Impostors look identical to everyone else, which is the whole puzzle. Released to little notice in 2018, the game exploded in 2020 when streamers picked it up during the pandemic.

Which actor plays Wadsworth, the butler who greets the blackmailed dinner guests, in the 1985 comedy film Clue?

Tim Curry's butler ends up explaining three different solutions: each cinema screened one of three endings. The film fell short of its budget in 1985 before growing a cult following.

Which sweet treat became the trademark of Telly Savalas's bald New York police detective Kojak?

A lollipop first appeared in a 1973 episode, when Kojak thought better of lighting a cigarette: the sweets were his way of cutting down on smoking.

Which actor plays Dr John Watson, back from army service in Afghanistan, in the BBC series Sherlock?

Martin Freeman's Watson keeps a detail from the Victorian stories: Conan Doyle's original doctor had also just come home wounded from a war in Afghanistan.

Which actress plays the title role in Enola Holmes, the Netflix film about Sherlock Holmes's teenage sister?

Millie Bobby Brown also produced the film, which adapts the first of Nancy Springer's novels and casts Henry Cavill as the famous older brother.

What uncanny gift does Charlie Cale, played by Natasha Lyonne, use to solve murders in the series Poker Face?

Detecting lies is her one trick, and it keeps her on the run across America in a 1969 Plymouth Barracuda after a suspicious death at the casino where she worked.

Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective played by Tony Shalhoub, consults for the police of which US city?

San Francisco's police keep calling him in because he was a brilliant homicide investigator there, until grief worsened his disorder so badly that he could no longer serve on the force.

Kathy Reichs's novels about the crime-solving scientist Temperance Brennan inspired which long-running TV series?

Bones turns the books inside out: on screen the forensic anthropologist Brennan writes mystery novels of her own, and their heroine is named Kathy Reichs.

Which veteran comic actor solved crimes as Dr Mark Sloan in Diagnosis: Murder, alongside his real-life son?

Dick Van Dyke shared the screen with his real son Barry, cast as the doctor's son Steve, a homicide detective who helps him crack the cases.

Which future action star played wisecracking detective David Addison opposite Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting?

Bruce Willis's Addison ran the City of Angels Detective Agency until Shepherd's character, a former model, renamed it Blue Moon after the shampoo she had advertised.

The first season of True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, is set in which US state?

Louisiana supplied more than the setting: the two leads play state police detectives, and the state's tax subsidies helped pay for every episode.

The corruption that private eye Jake Gittes uncovers in the 1974 film Chinatown centres on which Los Angeles resource?

Water is the prize: the plot draws on the California water wars, the real disputes that won Los Angeles the rights to the Owens Valley's supply.

Which newspaper ran a front-page obituary for Hercule Poirot in 1975, a first for a fictional character?

The New York Times marked his death in the novel Curtain with a photograph on page one. Christie had written the book in the early 1940s and kept it back for three decades.

Agatha Christie vanished from her home in 1926 and was found days later at a hotel in which Yorkshire spa town?

Harrogate's Swan Hydropathic Hotel had her on its register under the surname Neele, borrowed from her husband's lover, 184 miles north of the home she had left.

Which twist-ending Poirot novel did the Crime Writers' Association vote the best crime novel ever?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd climbed to the top from fifth place in the association's 1990 ranking. Its twist reshaped the genre and made it one of her most controversial books.

P. D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley continues which Jane Austen novel as a murder mystery?

Pride and Prejudice supplies the cast: Captain Denny, a minor character in Austen's book, is murdered on Darcy's estate, and George Wickham stands trial for it.

Which Swedish journalist died in 2004 before his Millennium trilogy of crime novels reached print?

Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack at 50 after climbing the stairs to his office, and the three novels he left behind began appearing the following year.

What is the unusual first name of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, concealed until late in the novels?

Endeavour honours the ship of Captain James Cook, whom his father admired, and suits his Quaker mother's taste for virtue names. It later became the title of the television prequel.

Jack the Ripper, the never-identified killer of 1888, struck in and around which district of London's East End?

Whitechapel gave the killer his other press name, the Whitechapel Murderer. Hundreds of letters claimed to come from him, and one arrived with half a preserved human kidney.

Which actor-director plays Hercule Poirot in the films Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice?

Kenneth Branagh also directed both films, as he had Murder on the Orient Express in 2017. A Haunting in Venice loosely reworks the novel Hallowe'en Party as supernatural horror.

Which 1941 film noir, John Huston's first as director, has crooks chasing a jewel-encrusted statuette?

The Maltese Falcon saves a sting for the end: after all the deceit, betrayal and murder, the prized bird turns out to be a fake.

Which Daphne du Maurier novel is narrated by a nameless young bride newly arrived at the Cornish estate Manderley?

Rebecca is named for the dead first wife whose memory haunts the house, while the living heroine never gets a name at all. The book sold 2.8 million copies in its first 27 years.

Which comic-strip police detective, created by Chester Gould in 1931, is known for his two-way wrist radio?

Dick Tracy first wore the gadget in January 1946, and it became one of the strip's most recognisable trademarks. In 1964 it was upgraded to a two-way wrist TV.

Which novelist wrote Strangers on a Train and created the charming con artist and killer Tom Ripley?

Patricia Highsmith broke through with Strangers on a Train, her first novel, which Alfred Hitchcock filmed within a year. Ripley went on to star in five of her books.

Which 2001 country-house murder mystery won Julian Fellowes an Oscar years before he created Downton Abbey?

Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman, brought Fellowes the Best Original Screenplay award, and Downton Abbey was first planned as its spin-off.

Under which pen name did Agatha Christie publish six novels far removed from her detective fiction?

Mary Westmacott's true identity was kept secret, though the publishers hinted from the start that a well-known author stood behind the name.

The annual prizes of Britain's Crime Writers' Association are named after which murder weapon?

The dagger lends its name to the whole set of awards for the year's best crime writing, topped by the Diamond Dagger for a lifetime's achievement.

Ann Cleeves wrote the novels behind Vera and which other TV crime drama named after a Scottish island group?

Shetland began with her detective Jimmy Perez. Her route to television started by chance, when a producer found a Vera novel in a charity shop while hunting for holiday reading.

Lilian Jackson Braun's 'The Cat Who...' mysteries feature Koko and Yum Yum, crime-solving cats of which breed?

Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum share the 29 novels with their owner, reporter Jim Qwilleran. Koko is short for the grander name Kao K'o-Kung.

Tony Hillerman's detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee serve in the police force of which Native American nation?

Navajo Nation Police officers Leaphorn and Chee carried 18 of his novels, and Hillerman modelled Leaphorn on a Texas county sheriff he met as a young newspaperman.

Which novelist created Easy Rawlins, the Los Angeles detective played by Denzel Washington in Devil in a Blue Dress?

Walter Mosley introduced him as a factory worker newly fired from a job building aircraft in 1948; in a later book, the money from that first case has made him a landlord.

Ellis Peters's medieval sleuth Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk at the abbey of which English town?

Shrewsbury Abbey is where the Welsh monk works as a herbalist, a skill he picked up in the Holy Land after going on the First Crusade as a soldier.

Kerry Greenwood's 1920s lady detective Phryne Fisher lives and solves her cases in which Australian city?

Melbourne is where the wealthy aristocrat settles, buying a house numbered 221B, the same number as Sherlock Holmes's lodgings.

Which suspect in the board game Clue was a reverend in the original British edition but plain 'Mr.' in North America?

Green is Reverend Green in the original British Cluedo. The North American edition dropped the clerical title and made him a plain Mr.