Conmen and other lovable rascals

Who is fiction’s most loved detective? Sherlock Holmes, without doubt.

- R. PRASANNAN

Why not Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple? you may ask. Many would proffer many reasons— Holmes is the pioneer, his skills of deduction are superior, and more.

There is another. Poirot and Marple are about murders. Murders are about arsenic, cyanide and blood spilled all around. Depressingly dirty and dismal. Decent people like me and the murderer in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case abhor blood.

Holmes, on the other hand, caught felons—jewel thieves, con artists and bank robbers. All delightful people, none dismal. Some of them could even be nice men to know, as was the blue-blooded bank robber in The Red Headed League. He insisted on being addressed ‘sir’ even by the policeman who was handcuffing him. Class!

The world loves felons. There is a charming ingenuity about their rascality. Look at the number of Hollywood and Bollywood hits that have been churned out about jewel thieves, con artists, train robbers and bank robbers—from the old wagon heists of the American wild west and The Great Train