Five of the best detectives from science fiction or fantasy

Neil Sharpson lives in Dublin with his wife and their two children. Having written for theatre since his teens, Sharpson transitioned to writing novels in 2017, adapting his own play The Caspian Sea into When The Sparrow Falls.

At Tor.com he tagged five top SFF detectives, including:

Constable Peter Grant, Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

A young Sierra Leonean/British copper with an aptitude for magic, Grant is recruited into the Folly, the London Met’s unit for dealing with magical crimes. A complete departure from your typical detective archetype, Grant is young, tech-savvy, snarky and genuinely seems to like other human beings(!)

Another thing that sets the series apart is that it doesn’t just show the aspects of policing that fiction tends to focus on i.e., solving crimes. Sure, Grant might face ghosts and body-hopping serial killers, but he also acts as a mediator, brokering peace between the feuding gods of London’s rivers and liaising with other agencies from across the world. Rivers of London takes a whole-cloth approach to depicting the day to day life of a modern British police officer which honestly makes it feel more faithful and realistic than a lot of straight crime fiction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue