Could the killer be the "completely cardboard actor" who stars as the hammy detective hero?

For more about his own detective hero, Yashim, and Jason Goodwin's travel books, see www.jasongoodwin.net.

You know you're not in Kansas when the detective hero of a police procedural is a heavy smoker and has two children who are hopeless drug addicts.

One of his detective heroes is called Cummings King Monk.

We assert the strength of our ego when we identify with the detective hero in a crime novel.

There is certainly precedent for humanizing the detective hero.

Nor will be, in the tradition of the detective hero of old, keep the meaning of any discoveries to himself.

And the detective hero isn't just solving a case--he's showing us what happens when good confronts evil.

"Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a cof- fin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero."

The former detective hero has won a role as a mobster in a new American cop series The Commish.