Armchair detective Armchair detective An armchair detective is a fictional investigator who does not personally visit a crime scene or interview witnesses; instead, he or she either reads the story of the crime in a newspaper or has it recounted by another person. As the armchair detective never sees any of the investigation, the reader can attempt to solve the mystery on the same terms as the detective. The phrase possibly originates in a Sherlock Holmes story from 1893, "The Greek Interpreter", in which Holmes says of his brother Mycroft, "If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from
Jack Spratt (fictional detective) fabricated. It is revealed that early on in Spratt's career, his ambitious and self-obsessed partner Friedland Chymes stole most of the credit for their greatest cases, thereby rising to the top to become one of the most popular detectives in England. Jack, being totally honest and unwilling to cater the media's demand for glamorous hero detectives, was unable or unwilling to stand up for himself; Friedland and Jack have been enemies since. However, as the story progresses it becomes clear that Jack is not only honest, but highly intelligent and a much better detective than Chymes. Spratt is a Detective