My Top Ten - Fictional Detectives

I thought I would share with you my personal choice of favourite fictional detectives. It turned out to be more difficult than I first thought. I'm sure you'll have different ideas and I'd like to see who I've missed.

• 10. - V.I. Warshawski Sara Paretsky's feisty Chicago private-eye was the first female gumshoe I discovered. She's a tough cookie and I love the way she tackles the Chicago underworld with gusto.
• 9. - Charlie Resnick The Nottingham police inspector, created by John Harvey, has a love of strange sandwiches, Notts County football team and jazz. Some of the books were filmed by the BBC with Tom Wilkinson of Full Monty fame as Resnick. Brilliant.
• 8. - Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's shoulders are the ones that almost every other crime writer stands upon. I still find him an amazing and beguiling creation despite his 130 years.
• 7. - Kurt Wallander The Swedish detective is the protagonist of a series of books by Henning Mankell. He is the curmudgeonly battering ram that helped to open the floodgates for a host of high quality Scandinavian crime fiction and I am very grateful to him.
• 6. - Endeavour Morse Colin Dexter's brilliant but lonely police inspector is one of the most loved of British detectives. The perfect casting of John Thaw in the television series was one of the few times when the character I had in my head when I read the books appeared on the screen.
• 5. - Sam Spade I wanted to be Humphrey Bogart from the moment I watched him in the Maltese Falcon as the suave, womanising Spade. Most writers of hard-boiled fiction would agree that they owe a debt to Dashiell Hammett.
• 4. - Harry Hole Norwegian detective Hole has moved up my personal list of favourites very quickly. The multi-talented Jo Nesbø has written a cracking character who battles his own demons as much as he battles the villains he tracks.
• 3. - Philip Marlowe The private detective with the best dialogue ever penned appears in some of the finest crime novels ever written. I can't help but admire the acerbic wit, the sense of time and place that Raymond Chandler brought to his novels. The detective that turned me into a crime fiction addict.
• 2. - John Rebus It's not only because Ian Rankin is a fellow Scot that his police detective appears so far up my list. Ian's work has the same quality that I so love in Chandler, an engaging character who moves effortlessly from the upper reaches of society to its underbelly and shows equal disdain for both.
• 1. - Lew Archer This is where I lose many of you as you wonder who is Lew Archer. Some of you may have heard of Ross Macdonald but I wonder how many have read his novels. His books, set in California, are often tragic tales of dysfunctional families told from the perspective of the private detective, Archer. The dialogue sparkles, the plots are brilliant and more than any other detective, Archer is the one I love. I'm on a bit of crusade to help people discover him for themselves.

Honourable mentions must go to Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne, who is a recent discovery and may well find a place in this list by this time next year. Also Arnaldur Indridason's Detective Erlendur and Hakan Nessers Inspector Van Veeteren.

Just outside the top ten is my own Craig Campbell. Well, I couldn't ignore him after all I've put him through over the past year. Lew Archer had a huge influence on Craig's creation although I wouldn't put myself on the same planet as Ross Macdonald, my Glaswegian private-eye is my tip of the hat to the books I love so much.

It would be great if you could give me some more suggestions and if I get enough I will compile a readers' top ten.