Ray,
Re your comment below:
> He's not hard-boiled, but there was always
Inspector
> Cramer, Nero Wolfe's
> antagonist and sometime ally. While the
individual
> Wolfe novels were short,
> the sheer volume allowed Cramer to become a
more
> fully realized character.
Cramer even starred in his own non-Wolfe novel, RED THREADS,
some time in the late '30s.
As for Pat, I think he's quite well-realized, particularly in
the Hammer "comeback" novel, THE GIRL HUNTERS, in which Pat
and Mike are estranged. Certainly he's a more developed
character than his two closest counterparts, Police Chief
Gentry in the Mike Shayne books and Homicide Captain Phil
Samson in the Shell Scott books.
If I had to pick a favorite "cop best friend" character in PI
fiction, though, it would be real-life gangbuster Eliot Ness
in Al Collins's Nate Heller series. He went Cramer one better
and was spun off, not merely into a solo novel, but into a
whole series.
JIM DOHERTY
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