Can you recall all the plots of all the books in all the mystery series that you’ve read over the years? Of course not. There are simply too many to retain the specifics. But what you DO remember from book to book are the protagonists.
What is it about a mystery series that makes us want to keep coming back, eager to devour the next installment? Is it the way the story is told, the plotting, the pacing? It is all of those things, of course—but most importantly, it’s the characters. We become invested in them and can relate to them. Sometimes we are so invested that, if they do something we think is stupid or make a bad decision, we get frustrated or angry at them. Often we’ll forget the plot to the earlier books in a series, but the protagonists live on in our minds. So, let’s talk about why we love certain characters.
Kinsey Millhone
Starting with the late Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone…She jogs three miles every day but enjoys junk food. She’s been in and out of various relationships and was married twice.
We can relate to her. She’s just a regular person with a self-effacing sense of humor who solves mysteries. From letter to letter in her series of “Alphabet” books, we watch her grow her friendships, romantic relationships, and her cases.
However, she’s one of the few characters who doesn’t really age. She’s been in the Eighties since, well, the Eighties. Kinsey doesn’t have a cellphone and has never streamed a movie on Netflix. Keeping Kinsey’s stories in that decade makes Grafton’s novels as comfortable as a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on a rainy day.
After 25 volumes of Sue Grafton mysteries, it’s nearly impossible to recall the plots of all of them…or any of them. But that’s not important, is it? As long as when you finish one, you’re looking forward to the next letter of the alphabet.
Travis McGee
A favorite character who I grew up reading was Travis McGee, written by John D. MacDonald. The books started with The Deep Blue Good-by in 1964 and ended with The Lonely Silver Rain in 1984.
Like Kinsey, Travis is relatable. There’s no sense of ostentation at all. He’s a beach bum who lives on a houseboat called the “Busted Flush” that he won in a poker game. He’s a self-described “Salvage Consultant” and “Knight Errant.” Travis makes his living by finding items that have been lost or stolen and taking a cut (usually half of what the item is worth).
Travis was another hero who didn’t seem to age—although at the beginning of the series, he intimated that he was a Korean War veteran. Somewhere along the way that subtly changed to him being a veteran of the war in Vietnam.
I was impressed that, even in the ‘60’s, he was a prototypical environmentalist, waxing poetic on how damaging encroaching human development was on the Everglades.
It wasn’t until 1979, in The Green Ripper, that Travis starts to slow down. In the last book of the series, The Lonely Silver Rain, Travis learns he has a teenage daughter and takes all the cash he has on hand and puts it into a trust fund for her.
Who can’t love that?
But as memorable as the recurring characters in MacDonald’s books are, unless I go back and reread them I can’t recall any of the plotlines.
John Rebus
Two favorites who do age are Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch and Ian Rankin’s John Rebus.
In the roughly 25 John Rebus novels (including a book of Rebus stories), the protagonist, Detective Inspector Rebus, ages in real time. In a 2017 interview, Rankin said that since he’d written in Rebus’s retirement, he’s slowed the aging process down for him. In the first book, Knots and Crosses, Rebus was forty years old. If he had aged in real time, he’d be seventy-three. Rankin admitted that when he’s presently writing, Rebus is in his sixties.
By rights, Rebus should be thoroughly unlikeable. He’s gruff, never minces words, and up until recent novels, drinks and smokes too much. He doesn’t spend much time thinking how he’s dressed or how other people judge him. He’s had multiple romantic relationships, but none that have lasted long. He’s divorced and has one child, a daughter, Samantha, who grows and ages in real time as well.
Rebus is loner who wants to do the right thing. Is that what makes us like him? I had the privilege of meeting Ian Rankin and talking with him, and he told me that Rebus—as well as his sworn nemesis Big Ger Cafferty—are both good Scotsmen. They’re both thrifty and, up until they aged out, they were heavy drinkers.
Rebus has a strong platonic relationship with the up and coming Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke as well as Inspector Malcolm Fox who we meet while he is working in an Internal Affairs investigating other cops.
It would appear that Rankin is grooming Clarke and Fox to someday replace Rebus as the lead protagonist in his mysteries. There have been two Malcolm Fox mysteries already. And most recently, Rebus adopted a stray dog, Brillo, in Even Dogs in the Wild. Who doesn’t like someone who is good to dogs?
Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch
What can be written about Michael Connelly’s Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch that hasn’t already been said? Twenty-one novels have given Harry Bosch a very full life of his own. Bosch is so firmly in the minds of mystery readers (and writers as well) that he’s even appeared as in cameo roles in other writers’ books.
Bosch has a long history with multiple partners, both professional and romantic. He has a colorful, exotic backstory. With each book that Connelly writes, his protagonist evolves. But Bosch is also getting older. It’s no secret that he is a Vietnam veteran, a tunnel rat. That would make him close to seventy-years-old. In his last book, Dark Sacred Night, Bosch is slowing down. He’s joined forces with one of Connelly’s newest creations, Renee Ballard.
By his own admission, Connelly said that Ballard’s debut appearance in The Late Show was intended to be a single appearance. But she was “too fierce,” so he brought her back. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of Ballard. She and Harry are both forces to be reckoned with on the likability scale. They’re both loners, they both have haunted histories, and they’re both relentless in the search for justice, break the rules to achieve it.
