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
Walter C. Mycroft (1928) was based. Their friendship does not seem to have survived their collaboration. Mycroft was elevated to head of production at Elstree during the 1930s, during which time BIP was reconstituted as the Associated British Picture Corporation. The company released a large number of films on which Mycroft was credited as producer, with varying levels of actual involvement. His adopted son, David Rees Mycroft worked as assistant director on a number of Elstree productions. David Mycroft, who isn't mentioned in Walter Mycroft's autobiography "The Time of My Life", edited by Vincent Porter and published posthumously, was an experimental filmmaker, poet