All I Needed to Know I Learned from Dragnet

By Adam Graham

Detective stories have been entertaining people for decades. The best fictional detectives are old friends who take us on amazing adventures. Along the way, they teach us a lot of life lessons.

Join podcaster and author Adam Graham on this fun journey through the annals of detective fiction. He examines the history and career of seven more of the greatest detectives and police officers from literature, radio, and television in this sequel to All I Needed to Know I Learned from Columbo. Among the way, he’ll examine some key insights from these beloved detectives, including:

-The importance of listening to others from Hercules Poirot
-How to avoid cynicism from insurance-investigator Johnny Dollar
-How to properly motivate others from Sergeant Joe Friday
-The importance of personal integrity from Officer Pete Malloy
-Being understanding of the frailties of others from Frank Cannon

In addition to twenty thought-provoking life lessons, the book also contains several appendices, including Graham’s list of the best Dragnet stories ever and a brief history of two-fisted, weight-challenged detectives. All I Needed to Know I Learned from Dragnet is a great resource for fans of detective fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Graham
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310743542

Book preview

All I Needed to Know

I Learned from

Dragnet

By

Adam Graham

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Now we’ve been rapping on and on about doing our own thing.

Well, that’s my own thing—’keeping the faith, baby!

Joe Friday

Copyright© 2015 Adam Graham.

Cover Art Copyright ©2014 Amanda Kelsey

All stories, television episodes, and movies quoted are the property of their respective owners and are quoted briefly under the fair use doctrine of United States Copyright law.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Hercule Poirot

Chapter 2: Frank Race

Chapter 3: Johnny Dollar

Chapter 4: Joe Friday

Chapter 5: Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed

Chapter 6: Lieutenant John Weston

Chapter 7: Frank Cannon

Conclusion

Appendix A: Top 5 Johnny Dollar Radio Serials

Appendix B: Dragnet and Me

Appendix C: The Top 25 Dragnet Programs

Appendix D: Missing Dragnet Radio Episodes

Appendix E: The Big Detectives

About the Author

Introduction

The first book in this series, All I Needed to Know I Learned from Columbo, took a look at seven fictional detectives and twelve life lessons that could be gleaned for their careers and histories. As I said in that book’s introduction, the best detective stories make their protagonist more than a puzzle-solving machine or a pile of clichés and toughness. To read Nero Wolfe, or to watch an episode of Columbo or Monk, is to take a journey with an old friend.

Over the past few years, I’ve become better acquainted with more friends, and people who enjoyed the first book encouraged me to write a second book.

Some of the great detectives have been left out for lack of them making a choice suitable for this book’s life lessons component.

The Thin Man is great, but the best lesson I could glean from it is, When people treat you like dirt, sometimes it’s because you’re asking for it.

Kind of a dour lesson.

Likewise, the chief lesson I got from John J Malone is that people are at their best when they’re totally plastered. Not only is this wrong, but socially irresponsible.

I loved the Leonidas Witherall novel I read, and I loved the Mr. Moto movies, but I can’t come up with life lessons out of those stories for the life of me.

However, I’ve observed quite a few new friends who we can learn a thing or two from. At the center of this little book is the imposing figure of Sergeant Joe Friday.

We’ll learn a lesson from others, too, including an insurance investigator with an action-packed expense account, an overweight private eye, and a hard-working patrol officer whose failure revealed more about his character than all of his successes.

We’ll begin with one of the most iconic detectives in history, whose full-length exploits are unsurpassed in the annals of crime fiction, that Belgian detective who uses the little gray cells, Hercule Poirot.

Chapter 1: Hercule Poirot

Agatha Christie was the most successful mystery writer of all time. In her own life-time, her creative output was massive as were her sales: Sixty-six detective novels, fourteen short story collections, and four billion copies of her work sold. She created many notable fictional detectives, including Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, and Parker Pyne, and created books that are classics despite their lack of a famous detective lead such as Witness for the Prosecution.

Her most popular and enduring character is Hercules Poirot, who appeared in thirty-three novels and fifty short stories between 1920 and 1975. Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Stiles. Poirot was a refugee who had come to England to escape the German occupation of Belgium and ended up settling in to have an extraordinary crime-solving career. The Poirot of the books is as iconic as any figure in detective fiction: five feet four inches tall with a bowler hat and a fantastic mustache. His novels are among some of the most iconic ever written: Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Akroyd, and the ABC Murders are among the most famous.

What made Poirot stand out and endure the test of time was his warmth and humanity. Too many writers of detective fiction had created dull logicians to work out their mysteries. With Poirot, Christie developed a complex and original character whose charm oozed off the page. He could be kind and compassionate as he interacted with people while having the ability to deliver summations like no other detective in fictional history, and also having an ego that was as his big as Poirot was small.

Poirot was not without detractors. The creator of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler, in his famous essay, The Simple Art of Murder called Poirot that ingenious Belgian who talks in a literal translation of school-boy French. However, the public and the critics didn’t see things Chandler’s way. The final Poirot book, Curtain features the character’s death, and the New York Times ran an obituary for Poirot after it was published, the first fictional character to be so honored.

Poirot was not only a literary success, but his many cases were adapted to the stage, with Christie herself writing many of them. In addition, Orson Welles played the detective on the radio in a Campbell’s Playhouse adaptation of The Murder of Roger Akroyd. In the early-1940s, the anthology series, Murder Clinic, adapted three Poirot short stories. In 1945, the Mutual Broadcasting System gave the Belgian Detective his own series.

Much like the Father Brown series, which aired about the same time, Mutual relocated Poirot from England to New York City with Harold Huber playing the lead. In the series, Poirot solved mostly original cases, with one program partially inspired by Christie’s classic Death on the Nile. In 1946, the series jumped to CBS and became a daily fifteen minute serial of original stories that ran for two years before the character left radio for nearly four decades. Sadly no complete story survives from this serial run.

Poirot first came to film in 1931 with Austin Trevor playing the role. Trevor was tall and had no mustache, making him an odd choice. Trevor attributed his getting the part to his ability do a French accent. Still, he appeared in a total of three films, two based on Christie novels and one on Christie’s play Black Coffee. All three films are lost.

In 1962, Martin Gabel appeared as Poirot in a lost episode of the General Electric Theater. It was a pilot for a series that never was. In 1965, Tony Randall (best known for his later role as Felix Unger on the Odd Couple) played Poirot for laughs in the 1965 adaptation of The ABC Murders called The Alphabet Murders.

Albert Finney was next to play the Belgian detective. He starred in the lavish star-studded Murder on the Orient Express in 1974 in a film that was both a critical and box office success. Christie died in 1976. Tragically, she was not at all satisfied with any of the attempts to bring Poirot to film up to that point.

The success of Murder on the Orient Express demanded more films, and Peter Ustinov took over as Poirot in 1978 in Death on the Nile. He’d go on to play Poirot in three motion pictures as well as three telefilms. The telefilms diverged from the books in removing them from their vintage setting to place them in the 1980s.

The 1980s were a landmark for Poirot adaptations. In 1986, Maurice Denham brought Poirot to the radio in The Mystery of the Blue Train over BBC Radio 4. Later that year, Peter Sallis played Poirot in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. In 1987, John Moffat starred in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Moffat would become best known for this role, as BBC Radio 4 created extremely faithful adaptations of most Poirot novels. As of this writing, there are seven Poirot novels that Radio 4 has not yet adapted. After John Moffat’s death, it remains an open question whether the BBC will make more adaptations.

In 1989, David Suchet played Poirot for ITV. His run stretched nearly a quarter of a century. Suchet recounted to the Radio Times a command given by Christie’s daughter not to make Poirot a comical figure, ‘If you’re going to make him a joke, then you are not going to play him; people can smile with him, but never laugh at him.’

Suchet took her advice to heart, giving a performance of a character who could be charming, but also compassionate, determined, and tough. Suchet, unlike Ustinov, looks much more like the books portrayal of the character. When many fans think of Poirot, they imagine him played by David Suchet.

The show was a success on both sides of the pond. The first series of Poirot featured one-hour adaptations of Poirot short stories, as did the fifth series. The second and third series were mostly short adaptations but each did one feature length novel adaptation, with The Peril at End House in series two and The Mysterious Affair at Stiles in series three. Series four and series six and featured only novel adaptations, as did all subsequent series. In 2013, Christie’s last five Poirot books were adapted to television.

The end for Suchet has far from been the end of the line for Poirot. The character continues to capture the imaginations of new generations. In 2004, Japanese public television featured Poirot in an animated series, Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple. Poirot has also been featured in graphic novels and video games. Though Poirot died in Curtain, it’s safe to say that he lives on in the public memory.

Only You Can Prevent Evil

Most fictional detectives solve crimes. Very few set out to prevent crimes with any degree of success. The 1960s show, Checkmate, featured a detective series where the focus was on preventing crimes. Yet, for most detectives, it’s a matter of course to go to work only after the crime is committed.

In rare instances, some detectives are on the scene before a tragedy, such as Columbo or Adrian Monk. Others such as Nero Wolfe shrug and say no one