Can you recommend a British detective

Can you recommend a British detective, (and author).

Recommend as many as you like, but please say Who your favourite is?

Precitable but I enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes - you don't get more British or more detective than that.

I'd wait an canvass some more as I've not read all that many detective stories.

Cheers.

Good English detective writers

Agatha Christie
Margery Allingham
Dorothy L. Sayers
Josephine Tey
P.D. James
Ruth Rendell
Val McDermid

Simon Brett
Harry Keating
Reginald Hill
Ron Ellis
Robert Barnard

and many more, plus

Ian Rankin (Scottish)


http://www.thecwa.co.uk/ for lots more.

Dirk Gently: He may not actually be British but Douglas Adams certainly is.

I like the Tom Thorne series by Mark Billingham, which begins with "Sleepyhead".

good British detectives...

Sherlock Holmes is, of course, THE true detective!!
More recently, any of the Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin.
Also, a really great crime story but not because of a great detective is The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre. Brookmyre (Scottish) has written others but I reckon this is a good starting point!!

In my younger days, I read a great many of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries, but Poirot isn't British, so . . .
You might do well to start with something like the anthologies edited by Hugh Greene (the first of which is called The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes) to get a taste of a lot of different writers.

Ilove Anne Perry's Inspector Monk and inspector Pitt series. You cannot be more British !

Ruth Rendell - Wexford
Colin Dexter - Morse
Lovesey, Peter - Peter Diamond - I think a little weaker but I have read several anyway.

I like the Inspector Linley series by Elizabeth George, her books are great!

I've been a big fan of medieval whodunits since the day I fell in love with Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series, so I guess this one can still be counted as my favourite (he's more Welsh than British, actually, but most of the stories happen in Shropshire, during the fight for kingship between Stephen and Maud. So I guess that makes it British enough). It's also been turned into a TV show of varying interest, depending on who gets to play Cadfael's sidekick and friend, Hugh Beringar (3 different actors for only 13 episodes).

As for "real" British medieval detectives, you can try Paul C. Doherty's three main series : those are :
- the Hugh Corbett series he wrote under his real name, and where the main character is a clerk to Edward I,
- the Kathryn Swinbrooke series, by C.L. Grace, my favourite, where the main character is a lady doctor during the War of the Roses,
- the Brother Athelstan series, by Paul Harding, where the main character is the assistant of the London coroner, at the beginning of Richard II's reign.
And of course there's also Kate Sedley's Roger Chapman, who's a... chapman, during the War of the Roses.

Oh, and she's not British, but I'm currently reading the Sister Fidelma series by Peter Tremayne, and she's a damn good detective too ! And the whole series is a wonderful trip inside 7th-century Ireland, and its very particular laws and habits.

Ben Cooper in series by Stephen Booth

Also Alan Banks in series by Peter Robinson

After seeing the televisinon series I would suggest R D Wingfield's Inspector Frost books, and if you like university educated detectives then maybe the Gervase Fen stories by Edmund Crispin.

British Detectives

I second Dorothy L. Sayers...love her mysteries, as well as Lord Peter Wimsey

I also enjoy Carola Dunn, who writes cozy mysteries

The books by Minette Walters. They're great

I love Mo Hayder, who is a relatively new author. She has written 2 books (Birdman and The Treatman) that are detective stories. They are quite graphic, so if you don't mind a bit of gore, they are great books.

I haven't read it, but my wife goes on and on about Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series.

What about Gwendoline Butler? She writes the DCI Coffin series.
Or there's R D Wingfield with the Frost books, and then there is Ian Rankin.

Another really good British detective is Inspector Banks, featured in books written by Peter Robinson, set in Yorkshire.

Surely you can't beat Sherlock Holmes? Anyone who can tell what the murderer had for lunch last friday just by the sound of his footsteps has to be the best detective ever? My favourite story is the dancing men - I once used this story in an English class in Thailand and the students very enthusiastically made their own dancing men code. The parents were very impressed when they found out their 9 year-old kids had been studying Sherlock Holmes!