Quirky Characters

Mystery fans are familiar with quirky, unusual characters. They are often what makes a mystery or series memorable. In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss the appeal of these characters.

Discussed and mentioned

Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley

Murder at Gulls Nest (2025) Jess Kidd

Department Q (2025) Netflix series

Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series by SJ Bennett

Homemaker (2025) Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare

Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening (2025) Naomi Kuttner

Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman

The Terrarium (2026) Katie Collom

Related episodes

Paranormal Mysteries with Naomi Kuttner (June 9, 2026)

For more information

Instagram: @cluedinmystery
Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
Sign up for our newsletter: https://cluedinmystery.com/clued-in-chronicle/
Order Life or Delft by Brook and Sarah

Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi, Brook.
Brook	Hi Sarah, today we’re going to talk about quirky characters in mystery fiction.
Sarah	Oh, this is such a great topic because I think that quirky characters and mystery often go hand in hand.
Brook	Definitely. And the genre seems to love them so much. Because unusual characters have been a part of mysteries almost from the beginning. I mean Sherlock Holmes is hardly an ordinary Victorian gentleman.
Brook	And then Agatha Christie gave us memorable characters like Poirot, Miss Marple, and Ariadne Oliver. That tradition has continued into modern mysteries where an eccentric personality can belong to the sleuth, a sidekick, a suspect, or sometimes even an entire cast of characters.
Brook	Quirky characters certainly aren’t unique to mystery fiction, but they seem especially at home here. And while we most of the time associate them with the more cozy or traditional sector of mysteries, they really do appear across the genre, from those classic detective stories that I mentioned to darker crime fiction, even including thrillers. So today we’ll get into why quirky characters work so well in mysteries. The different roles that they play, a few of our favorite examples, and whether there can ever be too much of a good thing.
Sarah	Sounds great. I’m looking forward to this conversation, Brook.
Brook	Me too. So, first of all, let’s define quirky because I think that this is a term that is thrown around in you know book reviews all the time. But to me, I just feel like it’s something that is memorable and unconventional about a character. So that is obviously a very broad spectrum.
Sarah	Yeah, and and you know, you think about… You want your characters to be memorable. Right. You don’t want it to be just. Any old lady sitting in the corner knitting. So, you want there to be something that is quirky about them. But I think about Agatha Christie and probably um one of her most quirky characters is, I think, Harley Quin.
Brook	Oh, yes. Good example.
Sarah	And, you know, there’s a bit of like mystery about who is this guy. um But you think about, you mentioned Ariadne Oliver and how she loved apples. Right. And that’s kind of the the thing that you that you think about her so I think often quirky characters have a… thing.
Brook	Yeah. For sure. For sure. Because the opposite of that would be, as you said, just any woman sitting in the corner, like that’s ordinary and predictable. And when you’re talking about fiction, normal is boring because we all live in the normal world. And so that’s why these like kind of eccentric or unique people make mystery and make story more fun.
Brook	But I do think that an author can give a character the need to do something. um You know, Poirot’s obsession with his mustache and you know being so organized and a perfectionist it tells us something about him as a character and it reflects how he solves crime. um And then we have Miss Marple, for instance, and her cozy hobbies such as knitting and being kind of obsessed with village life. Again, it’s like the, it tells us how she’s going to approach a crime and that’s really different from just saying, well, this person had big purple sunglasses and had a pet llama just to be quirky.
Sarah	Yeah, I think that’s a really good distinction Brook. It’s. Not just something they wear, but something they are. And when I think about quirky characters, you know, I think about Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce, who is… you know this 11-year-old, brilliant, incredibly quirky sleuth who as you say, this impacts her approach to solving the mysteries.
Brook	Yeah. And she’s a great example. And Harley Quin, too, in a way, because I think sometimes as readers, we equate quirky with funny and it doesn’t have to be humorous at all. You know, Flavia is definitely not a like comedic character, but she’s so unique and so engaging because of how different she is as as a little girl. So, quirky doesn’t necessarily mean funny.
Sarah	No, that’s ah that’s a great point as well. I just picked up from the library um a book, and i’ve I’ve only just started to read it. But the sleuth is a woman who has just left, being a nun. And she’s been a nun for a couple of decades. I can’t remember if it’s 20 or 30 years. And so there’s obviously. impacts the way that she’s looking at looking at life, right. So, the book is Murder at Gull’s Nest by Jess Kidd. And I think for a quirky character to work for me, I have to really connect with them, even if I don’t have any shared experiences with them, but as a reader, I have to connect with them from the very beginning.
Brook	Yeah, that is true. And that speaks to how well the author does, I think, in portraying them as a character and you know really developing that and making it seem realistic. Rather than just like we said, some characteristics that they plop on there.
Brook	But these characteristics do really lend themselves well, I think, to memorability. So, you know mysteries, we usually have a large cast of characters. And, or we can, at least. If you’re reading a Christie, there’s going to be a large cast of characters. And, it does help to have some of these very unique personalities to remember who is who. Like instead of it just being Mr. Jones, we know oh he’s the guy who does the card tricks or something like that like there’s this way to keep track of characters uh when they have these unique, unconventional characteristics.
Sarah	As you say, Brook, like that’s really important when you’ve got a lot of characters. And I think about books that I’ve. struggled with and it’s often because the characters are too similar. Right. Is this Mr. Jones? Or Mr. Smith? They both are you know tall wealthy men. What is it that makes them different? And so, I you know, I think we’re talking not only about um, quirkiness in characters and I think that that definitely helps with memorability. But um as readers, looking for each character to be unique. Right. You talked about this in the introduction could you have too much I think if if every character like If if there was one character who was always juggling and one character who. um you know, talked in riddles and another character who like it would be a bit like “Oh my gosh, this is… This is too much.” Um, But they’re, yeah, they’re. they’re You need to have something memorable. So I’m not sure if if we’re talking about quirkiness or or or memorability.
Brook	And how much those two things overlap.
Sarah	Mm hmm.
Brook	I like what you said. They need to be unique from each other, but they don’t necessarily need to each and every one be like super unique in the world. So, there’s like a ah varying degree of of quirkiness that we’re talking about. And kind of related to this, I think that… um there’s kind of a fun dichotomy that you can set up. If you have a very eccentric sleuth, they sometimes benefit from having the straight man, the Watson or the Hastings type. And then vice versa, if you have a very straight-laced sleuth, then they can have kind of a quirky sidekick. But there’s that balance again, isn’t there, that you were talking about? Like everybody can’t be completely off the wall.
Sarah	Yeah, I think that’s ah a really good observation, Brook that if you’ve got kind of a partnership as the investigation team, whether it’s an amateur or sleuth pair or uh you know traditional um police procedural even there you’ll you’ll get you know, the detective inspector might be. very straight laced whereas the constable may be the character that is a little quirkier.
Brook	Definitely. That brings to mind Department Q, which… By the way, there’s a new season coming up. I can’t wait. Mork is… very … this is kind of like the grumpy and the sunshine ah combo Because he’s very grumpy, and and understandably so, he’s been through a lot. But much more, I guess, like kind of that straight laced person. And then we have DC Dixon, who is… um She’s very colorful, even visually colorful because she has this gorgeous red hair, but she’s just bubbly and has a lot more animation. um And they can kind of get on each other’s nerves because of that. And that’s some some fun conflict. But yeah, that ability to have a… a partnership that is balanced is really great.
Sarah	Yeah, and and as you say, that that tension that… can emerge between the more standard character, let’s say, and then the quirkier one whether they’re more colorful or or um more playful or whatever it is that they… that makes them different. That can be a really important part of character development as they both come to appreciate the other’s qualities and then figure out how they can work together to to investigate.
Brook	That’s right.
Sarah	I’m just reading one of the books written by S.J. Bennett. And her sleuth is Queen Elizabeth, who we wouldn’t necessarily, based on what we’ve seen, you know what we saw of her in news coverage and and ah you know, books about her. Nonfiction books about her, you know, a very proper woman. ah She’s… the head of the royal family, Queen of England and and um not someone who you think of as being a detective and SJ Bennett has written this delightful series. So I’m just reading one of the books from from that and I love how she plays with the Queen having this public persona of being very proper and, you know, having to be very regal. But then with behind closed doors, she is quite playful and very thoughtful and very inquisitive, right? And is is kind of managing these investigations to figure out what has, what has happened? So, I don’t know if I would call her a quirky character because… certainly publicly, she’s not quirky. But she’s definitely a memorable character.
Brook	Mm-hmm. And so far we’ve kind of been talking about these ah characters’ personalities or their manner of dress or something like that. as the thing that makes them unique. But as in the case of the queen. Sometimes, or the or the nun that you mentioned earlier, sometimes the thing that makes them um quirky, is their regular job or their lifestyle. So, because the Queen as a sleuth. That just does it, right? We’re already, we’ve already got that level of memorability. And that brought to mind a book that I read earlier this year, and it was Homemaker by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare. It was a 2025 release. And this amateur sleuth is a stay-at-home mom, right? Like that is something you don’t necessarily put together with somebody who’s out fighting crime. And on top of that the authors have made her quite humorous and fun as well. But just a unique job can sometimes um be enough.
Sarah	Exactly, because the character then can bring some of the interesting features of their job into that investigation. So, thinking about Queen Elizabeth, she needs to, she’s really investigating on the sly. Right. Because she’s meant to be this head of the royal family um and so she’s trying to navigate how to how does she get the answers that she’s looking for without compromising any of that public persona that that that she has. um And so I think whatever that non-traditional job, let’s say, that the amateur sleuth has can be brought into the story and really add some some really interesting color to it.
Brook	Definitely. And there again, it is a function because it’s going to change the way that they see the world, they interact with the world. It’s going to be very different from. A quote-unquote “normal everyday person”.
Sarah	Well, and I like that example of the stay-at-home mom, because that is something that, um, A lot of people can relate to. Right. Certainly motherhood and trying to balance the needs of the family with this investigation it sounds like it could be quite um quite an interesting tension.
Brook	Absolutely. And it it is. I highly recommend it. It was a great it was a great book to read.
Brook	Speaking of unique occupations, we both recently read The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening and actually spoke with Naomi Kuttner, the author, here on the show. And that’s ah another example of number one, an occupation that you… wouldn’t hear about very often. But, she’s done a great job of placing this. person in a situation that is incredibly uncomfortable for for him, and made a really great set of quirky characters, I think.
Sarah	Right and a lot of those characters are ghosts. Right, which um which is what we talked to her about, that, that paranormal element. Which I guess is another way of um introducing that memorability.
Brook	Definitely.
Brook	But speaking of a um whole cast of quirky characters. I think that probably the series that does it best without making it over the top is ah Richard Osman in The Thursday Murder Club and i think when I say that people might say well they’re not quirky, they’re just a group of ordinary pensioners living in a you know in a community together. but That’s the kind of… quirky that that Richard Osman does that I think works the best. They’re all very unique from one another, which you spoke about earlier.
Brook	And they all have just something that you you have to remember them and you you already know by about middle of the first book how each of them are probably going to ah take on a situation. You think, “oh, Ibrahim is not going to like this.” Or, you know, you just kind of. get a feel for them right away and they’re quirks are functional and I just think he does a great job with this device.
Sarah	Well and I like what you just said, Brook about that it doesn’t take long for the reader to figure out. Okay, “how is this character going to react in this situation?”
Sarah	You would expect Elizabeth to react differently than Joyce or Ibrahim in the same you know if if they’re faced with the same kind of dilemma. And so, building that expectation for readers I think is is also part of that quirkiness that um that he does with the characters.
Brook	Mm-hmm. Right. and It goes back to something you mentioned earlier, which is you want to be able to hold on to this right off the bat. And he definitely accomplishes that, I think. Maybe the quirkiest of them all is Ron, but even that is not done over the top. Um, It’s just… It’s just very tasteful and, you know. I’m sure I am not alone in being able to see each and every one of them in my head
Sarah	Mm hmm. Great example.
Brook	Well, Sarah, there is a book that I think we should kind of have out on our horizons that’s going to fit in great with this topic and It’s by Katie Colum. It’s coming out later this fall and it’s called The Terrarium. And in this book, the protagonist is a professional cat sitter for wealthy clients. So we have this very very unique job that I think is a good representation of quirkiness. But it it sounds great and ah maybe we’ll have to read that and then have a recap on it how it fared in this category.
Sarah	I think that’s a great idea. You were talking earlier about kind of unique jobs. Professional cat sitter would definitely be one of them.
Brook	Absolutely. Well, thank you, Sarah. Today has been so much fun. And listeners, we hope you enjoyed it too. But until next time.
Brook	I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I’m Sarah. And we both love mystery.