Greg Clark Noir Art

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #28 INSPECTOR MAIGRET   Created by Georges Simenon.  Maigret was the French equivalent of Sherlock Holmes and had become so popular in the fourth year of his literary life that his creator's attempt to retire and abandon Maigret were doomed to failure.  Maigret is 5'11", heavy-set and broad-shouldered.  His heavy features, always clean-shaven, reflect his bourgeois origin.  His suit is well-cut and made from good material, and his hands are clean and well cared for.  He usually wears a heavy overcoat with a velvet collar and a bowler hat, and he keeps his hands in his pockets constantly.  He does not resemble the popular conception of a policeman. In Maigret's first recorded cases he is about 45.  In books four decades later he has almost reached the mandatory retirement age of 55.  He lives with his wife in a shabby but much-loved apartment on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and tries to go home for lunc...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #27 NANCY DREW A cultural icon, Nancy Drew is cited as a formative influence by a number of women including Sandra Day O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Walters, and Oprah Winfrey.  The teenage detective heroine (she's only 16) solves crimes that generally take place in old dark houses, secret passages, and underground caves.  Many of her adventures, aimed at the 8-13 age group, are set in foreign countries.  Nancy is highly intelligent and extraordinarily brave, and she ventures into situations that grown men would avoid.  Her best friends and constant companions are George Fayne, a "slender, boyish-looking girl with close-cropped brown hair", and Bess Marvin, who is pretty, a little plump, and more fearful than Nancy and George.  Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, attends Emerson, an out-of-town college but is often present to help solve a myster...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #26 THATCHER COLT Creator Anthony Abbott claimed that Colt was a composite of Grover Whalen and Theodore Roosevelt, both of whom were Police Commissioners of New York City.  Born to a wealthy family of high social position Thatcher Colt had ambitions of a career in either poetry or music, but he became interested in the study of criminology instead while attending college.  After serving with distinction in WWI he turned to police work as a career and rising to the rank of Police Commissioner of the NYPD.  Often called the best dressed man in public life, Colt is a striking figure with his huge, powerful-looking body and soldier's face.  Although he is in his early forties, his crisp and closely cut hair is still black.  His brown eyes are somber and his firm features reflect action and authority.  He lives in a five-story gray-stone mansion on West 70th Street that includes an elaborate gym, a library contain...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #25 SAM SPADE When private detective Sam Spade appeared in "The Maltese Falcon", a five-part serial beginning in Black Mask  in 1929 and a bestselling book in 1930, one of the most famous detectives in American literature was born.  He knows every cop and every hood in San Francisco, which he calls "my burg", and they know and respect him because he is a part of both their worlds.  He is idealistic, if not honest, and breaks the law frequently, but usually to help bring a criminal to justice.  He is the ultimate "hard-boiled dick", able to laugh at loaded guns, cops, gangsters, politicians, and seductive women. Created by Dashiell Hammett, the author describes Spade as having the face of a pleasant Satan marked by a recurring series of V's.  He has a long, bony jaw, a jutting V of a chin under a more flexible V of a mouth.  His nostrils form another V, smaller than the others.  His yellow-green eyes are n...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #24 MISS JANE MARPLE The most famous spinster sleuth in detective fiction was created by Agatha Christie in 1927.  Vaguely based on the author's own grandmother - a sheltered and Victorian lady not unacquainted with the depths of human depravity - Miss Marple is tall and thin and has china-blue eyes.  She once wore a lace fiche and gloves and, during much of her investigative work, used bird glasses.  Not noted for her admirable character, she was prone to gossip.  Time, however, mellowed Miss Marple, and she was later presented as a grandmotherly, English gentlewoman.  Born in the village of St. Mary Mead, she still resided there in a small house.  She was about 80 years old and had grown frail in the last years of the novels.  Unable to do much gardening or go for long walks, she still enjoyed knitting.  She lived on a small fixed income that was generously augmented by her nephew, Raymond West, a ...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #23 ELLERY QUEEN Shortly after his debut Ellery Queen was dubbed "the logical successor to Sherlock Holmes" because of his mental agility and acute observation of detail.  He is a somewhat arrogant young man, born in 1905, and makes his first appearance in "The Roman Hat Mystery" (1929).  Although he is a writer he spends little time early in his career working at his profession.  He appears to have unlimited time to collect rare books and help his father, Inspector Richard Queen of the NYPD, solve difficult cases.  Ellery is very close to his father, whom he accompanies on a Canadian vacation in "The Siamese Twin Mystery" and to a Chicago police convention in "The Egyptian Cross Mystery".  However, he is often condescending toward the older man and, during his youth, inclined to show off his erudition. Age smooths some of Ellery's rougher edges as the series progresses, and he works harder at his wr...

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #22 NURSE SARAH KEATE   Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, attended Wesleyan University, married, and traveled extensively throughout the world with her husband.  She turned to writing to escape boredom and subsequently restricted her efforts to fictional crime.  Her first five books were about the detective team of Sarah Keate, a middle-aged spinster nurse, and Lance O'Leary, a promising young police detective in an unnamed Midwestern city.  The unlikely duo functions very effectively despite Nurse Keate's penchant for stumbling into dangerous situations from which she must be rescued.  She is inquisitive and supplies O'Leary with considerable information.  By the end of the 1930s Mignon G. Eberhart was the leading female crime novelist in America and, next to Agatha Christie, was one of the highest paid female crime novelists in the world.  Her short stories appeared regularly in all...

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #21 THE SAINT Simon Templar is known as the Saint because, however nefarious his schemes may be, his motives are absolutely pure.  The Saint is a modern day Robin Hood.  Like the bandit of Sherwood Forrest the Saint attempts to right injustices perpetrated against those unable to help themselves.  And also like Robin Hood, the Saint steals only from criminals and scoundrels, and there are no limits to the methods he will use to help their innocent victims.  He has broken the law so often that his constant adversary, Chief Inspector Claude Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard, is thrilled when Templar moves to New York, where he becomes the special headache of Inspector John Fernack.  But the Saint has also helped official law enforcement agencies with some of their biggest problems, wreaking his own brand of justice when legal means are impossible. Templar, physically well-equipped for his adventurous life, is a muscular ...