You’re in Good Hands With These Eyes
- The Acme Indemnity Op
Jan Dana’s cynical, hard-boiled, nameless insurance op from the pulps. Any resemblance between this character and any other ficticious character by anyone named Hammett is strictly a coincidence. - Thomas Banacek
The smuggest dick this side of Spenser, urbane, suave, cocky Boston-based Polish/American freelance insurance investigator brought his elaborate locked room (and exhibition hall and football stadium and railroad crossing) mysteries to television and solved them all, much to the chagrin of his superiors and rivals, and the amazement of his chauffeur. - Dave Brandstetter
Joseph Hansen’s grim, terse, straight to the bone, no-nonsense insurance investigator stars in one of the tautest, tersest PI series of the eighties. - Brian Brett
Christopher Monig’s insurance claims adjuster, who bears a striking resemblance to… - Milo March
Kendall Foster Crossen’s insurance claims adjuster. Then again, Monig was a pseudonym of Crossen’s. - Manning Draco
Yet another insurance dick from Crossen, although Manning’s turf is decidedly unique — it’s outer space in the 35th century. - Jefferson DiMarco
Doris Miles Disney’s short, pudgy claims adjuster for the Boston-based Commonwealth Insurance company appeared in eight novels… and two films. - Wolf Lannihan
Lawrence Sander’s hard-living, hard-boiled and perpetually horny NYC dick toils for the International Insurance Investigators, but whether you’re in good hands with him is debatable. lock up your daughters. - Dora Conti
Another of Lawrence Sander’s insurance investigators, she leaves her hubby back in Hartford when her company sends her to Manhattan to look into a suspicious death claim. - Johnny Dollar
“The insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account” was one of the all-time great radio eyes. And one of the best in any medium. - C.W. Briggs
Woody Allen’s nebbish of an insurance dick gets by on “hunches” and “gut feelings,” and loudly proclaims himself a ladies’ man, before falling under the spell of an evil hypnotist in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. - Devlin Murphy/Trace/Digger/Patrick Daedulus Murphy
Warren Murphy’s half-soused, half-ass, sloppy insurance investigator, no matter what name he’s flying under, somehow manages to solve the case, usually with the help of his Asian/Italian girlfriend. - Jack Wade
Don Winslow’s Jack Wade is a disgraced cop/slacker surfer dude/hotdog insurance claims adjuster specializing in arson, slugging away for the California Fire and Life Insurance Company. - Edison Bixby & Wally Nash
This oddball couple (an ex-cop and a failed actor) solve cases for the Triax Global Insurance in this proposed series by Lee Goldberg.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
I’d love to see a Banacek reboot this time with his thoroughly feminist daughter (by Christine Belford of course) kicking insurers’ butts to find lost art, techno gadgets, and crypto caches. Mamie Gummer as Tommy Banacek, Rhea Perlman as Jay, and Helen Mirren as Felicia, who got the bookstore in the divorce. I’m kinda serious here. ABC’s Deception led me down the wrong path, tho White Collar was a nice inversion of the formula.