We can go around and around all night about who the first fictional “private detective” was, but most of us, I think, will agree that Sherlock Holmes was the first significant fictional detective — his 1887 debut was a literary shot heard ’round the world that still reverberates over a hundred and thirty years later.
Holmes called himself a “consulting detective,” and yes, he took money to invesigate crimes on behalf of private citizens, on a freelance basis. To deny his very real influence on almost every fictional detective, private, public and amateur that followed would be mere folly. The infuriatingly rational sleuth and his faithful companion and narrator, Dr Watson, are a part of us now, forever associated in the public imagination with deerstalker caps, magnifying glasses, and hansom cabs wending their way through the gaslit streets and eternal fog of late nineteenth (and early twentieth century) London.
But the staggering success of Holmes and Watson pretty much guaranteed that they were not the only fictional private detectives chasing down clues and bringing villains to justice. They had plenty of rivals, from the ridiculous to the sublime; some still read today, and some who have slipped through the cracks of time, most deservedly. But not all.
Some of them were blatant ripoffs; others openly stressed how different they were from Holmes, emphasizing how ordinary and down to earth they were, or how much more peculiar and eccentric than Holmes they were. Gimmicks abounded. Some were women, some were even American. Most were private detectives of one sort or another, but a few were police officers or amateur sleuths.
In 1970, Hugh Greene (Graeme’s older brother) released an anthology of Victorian and Edwardian mystery stories that were published back in the day, and called it The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, reintroducing readers to many long-forgotten sleuths. The book’s success inspired an ITV television series of the same name, which dramatized several of the stories, and prompted Greene to release three similarly themed collections: Cosmopolitain Crimes: The Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971), The Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1973) and The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1978).
The name stuck, and there have since been several anthologies since titled The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, edited respectively by Alan K. Russell, Graeme Davis, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Nick Rennison. Not surprising, really, since all these stories are in the public domain.
- Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Debut: 1887
Like, I have to make a case here? - Miss Loveday Brooke
Created by C.L. Pirkis
Debut: 1883
Arguably the first female private detective (and almost certainly the first created by a woman), Miss Brooke actually predated Holmes. - Nick Carter
Created by Nicholas Carter (pseudonym of John R. Coryell)
Debut: (September 18, 1886, New York Weekly)
The Americans hone in on the action with the introduction of Nick Carter, arguably the country’s longest-lived detective. An odd mixture of dime novel gee-whiz and master detective, he’s still around somewhere. Over the last 130 years or so, he’s been an adventurer, a detective, a hard-boiled private eye and even a James Bond-style spy, appearing in thousands of short stories, as well as novels, comics, radio, television and film. - Eugene Valmont
Created by Robert Barr
Debut: 1890s - Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison
Created by Arthur Morrison
Debut: 1894
One of the most successful of the rivals, the Hewitt stories often appeared in The Strand, alongside those featuring Holmes. - Miss Violet Strange
Created by Anna Katherine Green
Debut: 1895
Nancy Drew’s grandmother? Often considered the first “girl detective.” - Dorcas Dene
Created by George M. Sims
Debut: 1897 - Horace Dorrington
Created by Arthur Morrison
Debut: 1897 - Dora Myrl
Created by M. McDonnell Bodkin
Debut: 1900
A honest-to-goodness private detective, she rode bicycles and carried a gun. And then she got married… - Quincy Adams Sawyer (Junior)
Created by Charles Felton Pidgin
Debut: 1909
Not to be confused with his father, an lawyer/amateur sleuth with whom he shares a name and with whom he’s often conflated, Quincy Adams Sawyer (Junior) made his debut The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason’s Corner Folks (1909 ) as a young man with a penchant for solving mysteries, and returned in The Chronicles of Quincy Adams Sawyer, Detective (1912; co-written with John M. Taylor) as an actual private detective, with an office in Boston and everything. - Dr. John Thorndyke
Created by R. Austin Freeman
Debut: 1907 - Craig Kennedy
Created by Arthur B. Reeve
Debut: 1910
A scientific detective who uses new-fangled technological advancements like X-rays and microphones. - Clare Kendall
Created by Arthur B. Reeve
Debut: “A Skirmish with the Occult” (May 11, 1913, Omaha Daily Bee)
A female scientific detective from Reeve who also uses new-fangled technological advancements like X-rays and microphones. She even appears in one of the Craig Kennedy stories, where he refers to her as the “new woman.” - Miss Madelyn Mack
Created by Hugh C. Weir
Debut: 1914. - Max Carrados & Louis Carlyle
Created by Ernest Bramah
Debut: 1914.
- Madame Storey
Created by Hulbert Footner
Debut: 1923. - Philo Vance
by S.S. Van Dine
Arguably the last true rival of Holmes (the last Holmes stories were published in 1927), Vance was a presumptuous, pretentious monocle-wearing upper class twit, who solved crime in New York City, and was for years America’s most popular detective.
THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE ANTHOLOGIES
You’d think Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was a franchise or something, but it’s not. Besides collecting a bunch of public domain stories featuring various contemporary competitors of Holmes, and slapping “Rivals of Sherlock Holmes” on the cover, most of these anthologies have absolutely no connection with each other at all. They boast different editors and publishers and offer different commentary (if any at all), although many of the same stories are repeated over and over (and over). Even the art work is often depressingly generic, rubber-stamped with a profile of Holmes. You’d think these guys could at least come up with a more original title.
- Greene, Hugh, editor,
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Buy this book
Bodley Head, 1970.
A pivotal book in the history of the genre, spotlighting those mostly British authors who dared, with varying amounts of success, to take on Holmes. Includes stories featuring Horace Dorrington, The Old Man in the Corner, Dr. John Thorndyke and Martin Hewitt. - Greene, Hugh, editor,
Cosmopolitain Crimes: The Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Buy this book
Pantheon Books, 1971.
Spreading his net further, Greene assembles some of Doyle’s more accomplished foreign contemporaries, including stories set in France, Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium, United States, Denmark, Austria, and Canada. Includes stories about November Joe and Colonel Clay. - Greene, Hugh, editor,
The Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Buy this book
Pantheon Books, 1973.
A second round-up of British authors, although this one steps away from the mean streets of London and ventures into the English countryside, with the stories mostly leaning more towards Christie than, say, Chandler. - Greene, Hugh, editor,
The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Buy this book
Penguin Books, 1978.
The logical next step in the series, and an indication, perhaps, of things to come. Englishman Greene, feeling all smug and morally superior, states rather patronizingly in the intro that “Marlowe and Sam Spade could have walked into some of the situations and felt instantly at home” but he’s not wrong. - Russell, Alan K., editor,
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Forty Stories of Crime and Detection from Original Illustrated Magazines | Buy this book
Castle Books, 1978 - Rennison, Nick, editor,
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Stories from the Golden Age of Gaslight Crime | Buy this book | Kindle it!
No Exit Press, 2008. - Dziemianowicz, Stefan, editor,
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Buy this book
Barnes & Noble, 2015. - Davis, Graeme, editor,
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories: 1837-1914 | Buy this book | Kindle it!
Pegusus Books, 2019.
- Rennison, Nick, editor,
More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Stories from the Golden Age of Gaslight Crime | Buy this book | Kindle it!
No Exit Press, 2019. - Rennison, Nick, editor,
American Sherlocks | Buy this book | Kindle it!
No Exit Press, 2021.
Fifteen short detective stories written between 1890 and 1920, including tales by Melville Davisson Post, George Barton, Ellis Parker Butler, Samuel Gardenhire, Anthony M. Rud, John R. Coryell, , Anna Katherine Green, Arthur B. Reeve and Hugh Cosgro Weir.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
The TV series - The Rivals
The Radio series
Early Eyes
Historical and Literary Influences on the Genre - The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
Nick Rennison lists some of the brilliant, eccentric sleuths who rose and fell in the Golden Age (January 2019, CrimeReads)
