Solving a good mystery always feels satisfying, and modern mystery and suspense characters add to the experience. The best modern mysteries are only as good as the central character tasked with unraveling them.
These five iconic mystery and suspense characters get the job done because they are as intriguing as the central mystery itself:
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Cole Sear
A young child sees and interacts with the dead, which makes a great foundation for unraveling mysteries. In “The Sixth Sense,” Cole Sear is haunted by ghosts around him and tormented by unsympathetic adults and cruel classmates. Cole finds purpose as a supernatural detective of sorts when encouraged by his dead psychologist to help ghosts and bring them closure.
Sherlock Holmes
More than 130 years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first created him, Sherlock Holmes continues to live on both on the large and small screen. As portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in “Sherlock Holmes” and its sequel, he is a figure of modern sensibility and thought trapped in the 19th century. This brash modern interpretation makes Holmes stand out from stuffy past incarnations and makes him an ironic crime-solving figure in his surroundings.
Verbal Kint/Keyser Soze
Who is Keyser Soze? That's a tough question to answer even after “The Usual Suspects” has ended. The story follows Verbal Kint – a low-level criminal who survives a heist gone wrong. Nothing is how it seems on the surface as Kint retells the story surrounding the heist. Until the final twist reveals him to be Soze, audiences never suspect Kint's true cunning and genius. That's what makes him so memorable and also what
led the American Film Institute to include “The Usual Suspects” in its Top 10 Mysteries.
Jake Gittes
Tailing an unfaithful husband entangles a private detective in a web of murder created by corrupt water department bureaucrats. “Chinatown” introduced Jake Gittes, a self-assured detective who gets more than he bargained for in a seemingly simple case. Gittes is torn by injustice in how it plays out, a dilemma true to life where good guys don't always win.
This character helped make the screenplay rank among the best ever written according to the Writer's Guild of America.
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Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher
Only a journalist armed with sardonic wit can get to the real truth behind mysteries driving “Fletch” and “Fletch Lives.” Irwin Fletcher is memorable from the moment he is introduced because he can lace humor and hilarious disguises into serious murder investigations and conspiracies. Fletch turned the idea of a hard-boiled detective on its head and, instead, offered up a hero who used snarkiness and brains to overcome foes.
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