Famous Detectives
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50 free Famous Detectives trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Detectives are the puzzle-solvers of popular culture. For nearly two centuries, readers and viewers have followed brilliant, eccentric and stubborn investigators as they sift clues, spot the lie and name the culprit in the final scene. This quiz ranges across the whole tradition: the classic sleuths of Victorian and golden-age fiction, tough-talking private eyes, teenage mystery solvers, television cops with memorable coats and cars, big-screen gumshoes and a few real investigators who inspired them. Questions cover addresses and hometowns, sidekicks and nemeses, authors and pen names, and the actors behind the badges. It is written for mystery readers, crime-drama fans and anyone who likes to guess the ending before the last page. Most questions can be worked out with a little deduction, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Agatha Christie's fussy detective Hercule Poirot is often mistaken for a Frenchman but comes from which country?
Belgium
Belgium is where Poirot was a celebrated police officer before he fled to England as a wartime refugee.
Q 02Scooby-Doo, the cowardly cartoon dog who helps Shaggy and friends unmask fake ghosts, belongs to which breed?
Great Dane
A Great Dane was the brief, but designer Iwao Takamoto drew Scooby with a sloped back, bowed legs and a sloping chin, the opposite of a prize-winning show dog.
Q 03Which superhero, nicknamed the World's Greatest Detective, made his debut in issue 27 of Detective Comics?
Batman
Batman became so tied to Detective Comics that the whole publisher now goes by its initials, DC.
Q 04Which misanthropic TV doctor was modeled on Sherlock Holmes, right down to a home address numbered 221B?
Gregory House
Gregory House treats every illness as a puzzle to crack, and his loyal friend Wilson was conceived as his Watson.
Q 05In the 1963 comedy The Pink Panther, which introduced Inspector Clouseau, what is the Pink Panther itself?
A diamond
A diamond of enormous size carries the name because a flaw at its centre is said to resemble a leaping panther.
Q 06Under which shared pen name has a long line of ghostwriters published the Nancy Drew mysteries since 1930?
Carolyn Keene
Carolyn Keene never existed: Mildred Wirt ghostwrote the first Nancy Drew books from outlines by publisher Edward Stratemeyer.
Q 07Which American writer is credited with inventing the detective story in 1841 with The Murders in the Rue Morgue?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe set the template with his amateur sleuth Auguste Dupin, who reasons out that an orangutan committed the killings.
Q 08Which unusual pet does undercover detective Sonny Crockett keep aboard his sailboat in the television series Miami Vice?
An alligator
An alligator named Elvis shares the sailboat where Crockett lives, while the undercover detective gets around Miami in a Ferrari.
Q 09Which form of identification did Scotland Yard start filing in 1901 so detectives could track repeat offenders?
Fingerprints
Fingerprints differ even between identical twins, who share the same DNA, which makes them ideal for telling people apart.
Q 10Which Los Angeles homicide lieutenant in a rumpled raincoat keeps turning back to ask suspects one last question?
Columbo
Columbo wore his star's own shabby raincoat, and the famous parting question began as a quick fix for a scene that ran too short.
Q 11Sherlock Holmes shares rooms with his friend Doctor Watson at number 221B on which London road?
Baker Street
Baker Street addresses did not run as high as 221 when the stories appeared, yet fans have mailed letters to the address for decades.
Q 12Which musical instrument does Sherlock Holmes play to unwind between cases in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories?
Violin
Violin music is how Holmes relaxes, and he also loves hearing the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate perform.
Q 13Which criminal mastermind with a gift for mathematics grapples with Sherlock Holmes at the top of the Reichenbach Falls?
Professor James Moriarty
Q 21In which state does private investigator Thomas Magnum live in a beachfront guesthouse and drive a borrowed Ferrari?
Hawaii
Hawaii's island of Oahu is the setting for Robin's Nest, the 200-acre estate where Magnum stays at the invitation of its owner, Robin Masters.
Q 22Which San Francisco sleuth played by Tony Shalhoub battles obsessive-compulsive disorder and a long list of phobias?
Adrian Monk
Adrian Monk was a brilliant homicide investigator until the death of his wife Trudy worsened his condition and cost him his badge.
Q 23Which mystery novelist from Cabot Cove, Maine, does Angela Lansbury play in the series Murder, She Wrote?
Jessica Fletcher
Professor James Moriarty was created mainly as a device for killing off Holmes, so that Conan Doyle could end the stories.
Q 14On which bleak English moor do Sherlock Holmes and Watson hunt a ghostly dog in The Hound of the Baskervilles?
Dartmoor
Dartmoor's gloom was researched on foot: Conan Doyle explored the moor in 1901 with a journalist friend who supplied the local legend.
Q 15Which actor plays a modern-day Sherlock Holmes opposite Martin Freeman's Watson in the BBC series Sherlock?
Benedict Cumberbatch
Benedict Cumberbatch made only thirteen episodes as Holmes, spread across four series and one special between 2010 and 2017.
Q 16Which actor played Hercule Poirot on British television across 13 series that ran from 1989 to 2013?
David Suchet
David Suchet stayed until Curtain, Poirot's last case, by which point every major Christie work featuring the detective had been filmed.
Q 17In Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, what strands the train with a killer and Hercule Poirot aboard?
A snowdrift
A snowdrift in Yugoslavia stops the Orient Express, so the murderer has no way to leave and must be one of the passengers.
Q 18In which fictional English village does Agatha Christie's elderly amateur sleuth Miss Marple live and solve murders?
St Mary Mead
St Mary Mead may look sleepy, but neighbours there find Miss Marple's nosiness and habit of assuming the worst in others tiresome.
Q 19In which fictional seaside city do teenage brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, the Hardy Boys, solve their mysteries?
Bayport
Bayport sits on Barmet Bay, where the brothers live with their detective parent Fenton Hardy and their Aunt Gertrude.
Q 20Which bald, sharply dressed New York police lieutenant of 1970s television sucks lollipops to cut down on smoking?
Kojak
Kojak shared his Greek American heritage with actor Telly Savalas, and the lollipop became the character's trademark.
Jessica Fletcher won Lansbury four Golden Globes, and the amateur sleuth's cases range far beyond her small hometown.
Q 24Which future action star played a wisecracking Blue Moon agency detective opposite Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting?
Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis became a star through the show, which is counted among the first hits to blend comedy and drama into the dramedy.
Q 25In which state do detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart hunt a killer in the first season of True Detective?
Louisiana
Louisiana was not the first choice: creator Nic Pizzolatto preferred Arkansas, but tax credits lured the production south.
Q 26Which model of bright red Ford with a white stripe do television detectives Starsky and Hutch drive?
Gran Torino
Gran Torino was the model picked for the pilot, and star Paul Michael Glaser took an immediate and lasting dislike to the flashy car.
Q 27Which action film does Detective Jake Peralta of Brooklyn Nine-Nine love so much that he names his son after its hero?
Die Hard
Die Hard is the film Peralta quotes constantly, and his baby is named McClane, shortened to Mac, in honour of its lead character.
Q 28In which English university city does the opera-loving Inspector Morse solve murders and drive a classic Jaguar?
Oxford
Oxford's real colleges were not enough for author Colin Dexter, who invented extra ones such as Lonsdale to host the crimes.
Q 29Which actress played Jane Tennison, one of London's first female Detective Chief Inspectors, in the drama Prime Suspect?
Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren's Tennison confronts sexism inside the police force as well as killers, and rises to Detective Superintendent.
Q 30Which New York detective, later a captain, did Mariska Hargitay first play when Law & Order: SVU began in 1999?
Olivia Benson
Olivia Benson started as the junior partner of Elliot Stabler and climbed rank by rank to command the whole unit.