Gentleman Detective

Gentleman Detectives are male characters (or, less commonly, female characters) has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in Britain in the Golden Age.

Description
The heroes of these adventures are typically both gentlemen by conduct and also members of the British gentry. The literary heroes being in opposition to professional police force detectives from the working classes.

Gentlemen detectives include amateurs, private detectives and professional policemen. They are always well educated, frequently have unusual or eccentric hobbies, and are commonly found in their natural environment, an English country house. This type of British detective forms a contrast to the less cerebral and more 'hard boiled' style of hero in American crime fiction. See the history of American hardboiled fiction.

Associations

 * Vigilante

Literature

 * Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes series)
 * Rachel Verinder (The Moonstone)
 * Hercule Poirot (The Mysterious Affar at Styles)