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
The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother is a Portuguese fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in "The Lilac Fairy Book". A rich old man with two sons, lost his wife. The older son lived with him and the younger son lived in the city. One day, the man learned that his older son had secretly married. The father turned him out, sent for his younger brother, and made him his only heir. He died and left his estate, which was not as good as it once was, to the younger son. The