The Best Sleuths and Snoops of the Decade

Ever since Edgar Allen Poe penned "Murders in the Rue Morgue", people have enjoyed a good detective story, and modern-day episodic television has become home to some of the finest characters in the genre. This may be because, even in short-run series, characters have much more time to develop and deepen than they do in a couple of hours on the big screen. In addition, detective series tend to lend themselves well to wrapping up individual stories while continuing the sagas of the main characters.

One of my guilty pleasures is curling up in the comfort of my living room to watch these amazing fictional sleuths as they solve new mysteries, or uncover clues to a few on-going ones.

Here I provide a recap of the Top Ten Television Detectives of the Decade. This list is comprised of my personal favorites culled from cable and network television shows that have aired in the United States at some point during the period of 1999 - 2009.

#10 Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster
James Roday and Dulé Hill
Psych
2006 - Present
USA

The first entry on my top ten list is actually a duo, but Shawn Spencer and Burton "Gus" Guster are such an inseparable detecting team we could not imagine not listing them together. These childhood friends, turned "psychic" detectives totally embody the USA Network's "Characters Welcome" tagline. With Spencer's keen skills of observation and deduction and Gus' intellect, the pair always stumble upon just the right information to solve the case, despite the bumbling local police force and the disapproval of Shawn's overly strict father.

If you'd like to know more about how this crime solving partnership came to be, check out the three webisodes, "Psych: Flashback to the Teen Years" at www.usanetwork.com.

#9 Veronica Mars
Kristen Bell
Veronica Mars
2004 - 2007
UPN/CW

Technically, Veronica helped out after school at her ex-cop father's private investigation office. In reality, she was the real investigator, solving crimes around her upscale neighborhood and often finding clues at her affluent high school. With a razor-sharp intuition and a more than adequate supply of moxie, she solves crimes like an old-school gumshoe - with a dogged determination and legwork. She sure got my teenagers interested, and she left us far too soon.

#8 Allison Dubois
Patricia Arquette
Medium
2005 - Present
NBC/CBS

As a housewife and mother of three girls, Allison is an unlikely detective. As a psychic, she's a natural, with the dead giving her insights unavailable to the general population. As a consultant for the Phoenix District Attorney's office, she solves crimes out of a moral obligation to use the knowledge she possesses rather than from a sense of duty or commitment to a job. I also love the fact that she's in a solid marriage (okay, they occasionally have some rocky patches, but what couples don't), so there's no romantic cat and mouse between her and the police detectives.

#7 Andy Sipowicz
Dennis Franz
NYPD Blue
1993 - 2005
ABC

Andy Sipowicz is one of those unlikely heroes that somehow captures your attention and won't let go. For 12 seasons, the larger-than-life police sergeant ran the course of human misery. He lost two wives (one to divorce, the other to a gunman), had a son killed in the line of duty, adopted a sister-in-law's baby after she died, and lost a partner to heart failure - all while battling his own demons of alcoholism, rage, and bigotry. While we can't condone any of his bad behavior, we also can't deny that he got the job done - even if it meant ignoring a suspect's Miranda rights or, worse, pounding the living daylights out of him.

# 6 Alex Donovan
Christian Slater
The Forgotten
2009 - Present
CBS

It may be a bold move to put a character that has not completed even one full season on a list of the Top Ten of the Decade, but Alex Donovan is a bold character and so is the premise for the show. Unlike other detectives who are looking for the culprit, Alex and his team from the Forgotten Network are trying to deduce the identity of the victim - although they often figure out the killer in the process.

Donovan, an ex-police detective, left the force after his daughter disappeared and his marriage unraveled. He takes each case personally, the way he would hope someone would react if they found his daughter's unidentifiable remains.

#5 Adrian Monk

Tony Shalhoub
Monk
2002 - 2009
USA

With the end of the decade, so, too, we come to the end of Monk. The germaphobic, agoraphobic, lactophobic, but always lovable, crime solver extraordinaire ends his eight season run by solving the most personal of all crimes - the murder of Trudy Monk. For a man who always saw the answers in the minutest of details, it appear that his own compulsions kept him from discovering the answers to his wife's murder - answers that she left him right before she died.

The "defective detective" was respected by his former colleagues, who relied on him more than they cared to admit, and frustratingly tolerated by two different assistants, who each had to have the patience of Job to handle their obsessive-compulsive employer. His departure will leave a hole in programming that will be hard to fill.

#4 Don and Charlie Eppes
Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz
Numb3rs
2005 - Present
CBS

Like Shawn and Gus, the Eppes brothers are inseparable - at least on this list. Don is the true FBI detective, who leads a competent team of law enforcement professionals in solving some of the most complicated and baffling crimes to hit the west coast. Don's younger brother Charlie was a whiz-kid mathematician (think Doogie Houser in academia), who is now a professor at the fictional CalSci and indispensible to the crime solving equation. He plugs the information that Don's team collects into mathematical formulas that lead them straight to the bad guys.

#3 Patrick Jane
Simon Baker
The Mentalist
2008 - Present
CBS

Reformed fake psychic Patrick Jane has taken to using his astute powers of observation, intuition, and a skillful ability with hypnosis to help the California Bureau of Investigation solve crimes. His motives are not altruistic, however. Jane's wife and child were brutally murdered, and Jane hopes his position as a consultant with the CBI will help him find their killer, Red John. Normally, cool and collected, Jane reveals a darker personality whenever the team is closing in on his nemesis. The man's three-piece suits and calm demeanor are reminiscent of the great consulting detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe.

#2 Richard Castle
Nathan Fillion
Castle
(2009-Present)
ABC

How did Rick Castle garner the number 2 spot of the decade with only 23 episodes in the can? If you have to ask, you have not seen this show. My entire household comes to a screeching halt every Monday evening at 10:00 p.m.

Take the innocence of Jessica Fletcher, the society connections of Ellery Queen, the panache of David Addison (Moonlighting), and the looks of Sonny Crockett and you have Richard Castle. A mystery author who shadows a female police detective for writing inspiration, Castle makes major contributions to solving the cases. Unlike some other shows with similar formulas, the real cops are still smart and get their fair share of detecting in as well - Castle works with them, not over them.

Castle's relationships with his daughter, marvelously portrayed by Molly Quinn and his smart and sassy mother (Susan Sullivan as a ravishing redhead) round out his diverse character.

Castle's latest novel, Heat Wave, can be previewed at www.abc.com and purchased at bookstores, including amazon.com. The book, penned by an unknown author, is published as a work of the television character. It debuted in September 2009 on the New York Times Bestseller list; and later peaked at #6.

#1 OLIVIA BENSON
Mariska Hargitay
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
(1999 - Present)
NBC

I put Olivia Benson at the top of the list, in part, because she is the only television detective (male or female) in my Top Ten to have survived all 10 seasons of the decade. An impressive accomplishment in itself.

But it's not just her longevity that makes her the best. As a detective in the Special Victims Unit (SVU), Benson operates in a world of street-smart cops, hardcore district attorneys, and seriously edgy personas. She holds her own even in the most gruesome of cases, with the tenacity to get the job done and enough compassion to keep her human . Her intellect is as sharp as any of the law and order good guys and her intuition just as keen.