Concepts and Characters I like From Books

 I like the idea of literally rolling in wealth, like Richie Rich did.. he had a room full of dollars. Also, having a butler- his was called Cadbury.

The concept of a magic potion used by Asterix, brewed by Druid Getafix- that's s great idea.

A mouse like Mickey, and a talking duck like Donald.. great imagination, Walt Disney!

Nero Wolfe, a gourmet AND a detective.

Hercule Poirot with his egg-shaped head, and little grey cells. Mon ami, Mon cher, whatever, ..pardon my French.. Oo la la!

Phantom's skull cave, with a waterfall covering its entrance, is a masterstroke, according to me. Mandrake's hypnotism too.

James Bond- I never read the books, but he rose from the books to become the colourful character everyone wanted to Bond with...

Of course, Sherlock Holmes, with his deductions based on observation. Market researchers could learn a few things from him.

All the Enid Blyton characters who were as different as chalk and cheese. Fatty, in particular. And Goon.

Thomson and Thompson.. and Captain Haddock..

Agatha Christie, Mystery Books and Films

Agatha Christie was a part of growing up. I read a lot of her books. My favourite creation of hers is the Belgian with the egg-shaped head, Hercule Poirot. I also watched a few of the English films that were made based on her books. The three films I liked best were Evil Under the Sun, Death on the Nile, and Murder on the Orient Express. Naturally, they are all Hercule Poirot mysteries, with Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney playing him. I also saw a couple of films based on the Miss Marple character, but to me, she was an "inferior" detective.

The Hindi film Gumnaam was also based on And Then There Were None, written by her. It was a really good film in the suspense genre, where winners of a contest are flown to an island resort, and bumped off one by one..excellent plot. Mehmood acted really well, and the song Hum kaale hain to kya hua dilwaale hain that he sang on-screen became a rage. Other popular songs were Jaane chaman, shola badan, filmed on the lead pair of Nanda and Manoj Kumar, and Jaan pehchan ho, jeena aasaan ho, sung at the party where the contest winners are announced at the beginning.

I doubt if anyone wrote as well as her in the world of detective fiction, though I also like Rex Stout and his detective Nero Wolfe (with Archie Goodwin as the sidekick), and Perry Mason, the lawyer who solved mysteries while getting his clients off the hook (literally, as they faced murder charges). A black and white TV series starring Raymond Burr as Perry Mason was my favourite while in the U.S. in the late eighties.

The other singular author in this genre was of course, Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is incomparable, as is Watson. Elementary, you say? Also filmed well in an old TV series I remember watching on DD.