There were many detectives plodding their way through thousands of mysteries in popular fiction before the dime novel became a twenty-five-cent paperback, but only a few of them stand out in such a heavily littered genre. Sherlock Holmes is, of course, the most well-known nineteenthcentury detective, but Edgar Allan Poe's Monsieur Dupin was the first classic sleuth in American fiction. Spenser can be compared, or more properly, contrasted, with both. Though he shares with Holmes the knowledge of how important it is to rely on a trustworthy helper, he certainly does not have the meticulous, almost insane attention to detail that served Holmes so well. In fact, Spenser readily admits that he is often just stumbling around in the dark with good intentions and little inspiration. And while he has the dogged determination of Dupin, he does not ruminate or concentrate too well. As he says...