5. Roger Sheringham
Created by: Writer and reviewer Anthony Berkeley Cox initially anonymously and then under one of his less imaginative pseudonyms: Anthony Berkeley. He also wrote classic "inverted detective story" from the murderer's perspective Malice Aforethought under the name Francis Iles and was published as A. Monmouth Platt. Berkeley founded the Detection Club with other popular mystery writers including Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and G.K. Chesterton. He wrote ten Sheringham novels from 1925's Layton Court Mystery to 1934's Panic Party.
What's his appeal?: On occasion every bit as confrontational and abrasive as Sherlock Holmes, reporter and amateur investigator Sheringham distinguishes himself by not being right nearly so often. Although he writes with a light touch, Berkely is interested in a certain amount of psychological plausibility in both the cases and their solutions. As a result Sheringham is quite capable of failure, often providing a very reasonable solution only for a final twist to prove him wrong. It's this fallibility that is likely to appeal to a modern TV audience who'd rather their heroes weren't perfect and constantly successful.
Sidekicks and supporting cast: Many of Sheringham's cases see him investigating the same crimes as police Inspector Moresby. While presented as something of an everyman, Moresby is equally far from the Lestrade archetype of a professional policeman well behind the interested amateur. He is a capable mystery solver and his relationship with Sheringham is more one of friendly rivalry than one being inherently superior to the other. There always seems a genuine possibility that Moresby may solve the case before Sheringham does, something that would keep TV audiences used to the sidekick as sounding board on their toes.
Any on screen previous?: Short story The Avenging Chance was adapted as part of 60s mystery anthology series Detective with Hammer horror star John Carson as Sheringham. Trial and Error, which does not feature Sheringham but does share characters with his novels and so can be perceived as occuring in the same "world", was filmed as Flight from Destiny in 1941, the same year as one of Berkeley's Francis Iles novels Before the Fact was adapted far more successfully as the Hitchcock-Cary Grant picture Suspicion. There is plenty of unrealised potential, then, in a screen version if Sheringham.
If they only made one: The Poisoned Chocolates Case features the Crimes Circle, a group of armchair detectives including Sheringham that are clearly a lightly fictionalised version of Berkeley's own Detection Club. Each character offers their own solution to a case that has recently baffled Scotland Yard and this Rashomon-like structure and illumination of different methods of investigation and deduction is as likely to feel novel and modern to a TV audience used to the formula of the genre as it did to its original readers in 1929. In one further almost post-modern twist, the set-up and Sheringham's proposed solution is the same as the aforementioned Avenging Chance. The correct solution, however, surprisingly is put forward by the most meek and mild of the whole group.