Phone-in Detective

You have an Amateur Sleuth or an Exotic Detective. And to prove just how smart he is, not only can he solve any case just by scanning the crime scene, he can also solve crimes without ever having to visit the scene. The Phone-in Detective is the detective who is able to do some of his sleuthing over the phone due to being away for some reason. Full time Phone-in Detectives are rare, often the detectives will only have to phone in very few of their cases their whole life and will only do so for special cases. It is not completely necessary for any phones to be involved, however.

Will sometimes be the only interaction the lead has in a Lower Deck Episode.

Examples of Phone-in Detective include:

Anime and Manga

• The manga Remote was about such a detective—he'd developed agoraphobia, so was assigned a young policewoman with a two-way radio who did the leg work.
• Death Note: L has been in hiding his entire career, and communicates via phone, computer and his intermediary Watari, emerging only on special occasions for particularly complex crimes or particularly helpful assistants.
• Victorique from Gosick isn't allowed to leave the Academy until later in the story, so she often solves cries based on descriptions of the circumstances given to her by witnesses.
• Shinchi from Detective Conan pretends to be this sometimes when Conan reveals the answer to a case, but is actually there at the crime scene himself (as Conan).

Film

• The Bone Collector. Quadriplegic forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) uses police officer Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) as his eyes and ears to catch a serial killer.

Literature

• Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft.
  • Also Sherlock's primary MO for the majority of his 'Consulting Detective' commissions: the reader generally only hears about the ones interesting enough for him to bestir himself, but many stories open with Holmes ranting about how the lack of decent crime has once again reduced him to pathetic challenges he can resolve from his armchair.
    • And remember that Holmes could still manage a lot of those cases in his career,but given Watson is the guy who publishes Holmes cases, it only makes sense that he publishes the most interesting cases (when Holmes does something) rather than those that could be solved by phone, or telegraph or consult or whatever.
• Edgar Allan Poe's C. August Dupin solved The Murder of Marie Roget by reading newspaper accounts.
• Encyclopedia Brown sometimes, especially when solving cases for his father over dinner.
• Nero Wolfe who rarely left his brownstone, having Archie Goodwin act as his leg man and collect all the information he needed to solve the crime.
  • And Nero Wolfe had an Expy in the Lord Darcy stories: Darcy's cousin the Marquis of London. As brilliant a mind as Darcy, but lazy (and cheap). So much so that he once had Darcy's assistant Master Sean arrested for murder so Darcy would be forced to solve the crime in order to prove his innocence.
    • D'arcy countered by proving that the most likely suspect was Lord Bontriumphe, the Marquis' personal assistant (the Goodwin expy).
  • Parodied in The Areas of My Expertise with a detective who never leaves his bathtub.
• Hercule Poirot once solved a crime without leaving his room for a bet. No phone was involved though, he just asked for police reports (and used his friend Hastings to run errands). On another occasion he was in bed with flu, and contacted Hastings at the scene via telegram.
• The Argentine detective Don Isidro Parodi, created by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares under the pen name H. Bustos Domecq, is a man unjustly imprisioned to whom friends (and friends of friends) come visit at his cell with stories about mysteries and crimes, which he never fails to solve just by listening to their reports.
  • Don Isidro Parodi is a Deconstructive Parody of this (and many others mysteries) tropes combined with a juvenalian Satire of Argentinean society: All the "friends" who consult him are truly JerkAsses whom could not care less about Parodi’s Miscarriage of Justice being falsely accused and judged by a Kangaroo Court only to save a Sleazy Politician mook (Truth in Television in all Latin America). It’s implied that all the consultants have enough intellect to discover the crime for themselves, but they can’t because they are Hypocrites who don’t want to face the truth about themselves. One of the consultants lampshades that an imprisoned man could not be the right person to solve crimes, only to immediately explain Parodi his case. One third of the cases Parodi gets the consultants try to make him his Detective Patsy, no one pays him or try to ClearHisName, and given his situation as everyone’s Butt Monkey, the only triumphs he has is to be the Doomed Moral Victor and tries to make things For Happiness.
• Henry, of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers mysteries, can solve any mystery after hearing it described over dinner.
  • Another Asimovian detective, Wendell Urth, was so afraid of travelling that he, like Nero Wolfe, worked almost entirely from home.
• The Old Man in the Corner stories by the Baroness Orczy, creator of The Scarlet Pimpernel. A classic armchair detective, the Old Man relies mostly upon sensationalistic "penny dreadful" newspaper accounts, with the occasional courtroom visit. He narrates all this information, while tying complicated knots in a piece of string, to a female Journalist who frequents the same tea-shop (the ABC Teashop on the corner of Norfolk Street and the Strand). They enjoy an antagonistic relationship, as the Journalist attempts to cut the Old Man's ego down to size and the Old Man trumps her every time.
• Agatha Christie had Tommy and Tuppence solve one case in the style of the Old Man In The Corner in Partners In Crime.
• In The Roman Mysteries, Kid Detective Flavia solves several mysteries this way in some of the short stories, though in the regular novels she generally investigates mysteries on the scene.

Live Action TV

• The title character of the ITV series The Man In Room 17 was a sociologist who consulted on difficult police cases and solved them without ever leaving his office.
• Monk once solved a hit and run by reading a newspaper. Then he solved a murder in France that was reported in the same newspaper and phoned the French police department about his revelation.
  • In direct parallel with Sherlock Holmes, we have Adrian's much smarter brother Ambrose, who never leaves his house. Unlike Mycroft's laziness, Ambrose is severely agoraphobic.
• Psych: Shawn began his crime-solving career by reporting anonymous tips to the police through the phone based off observations he made watching news reports.
• House, the medical detective, once had to solve a case through the phone while at the airport. Another case was solved over a webcam since the patient was stuck in Antarctica. Even in normal circumstances, he often can't be bothered to talk to the patient, and phones in a diagnosis via his underlings.
• The Fat Man of Jake And The Fat Man?
• Patrick Jane of The Mentalist once spent most of an episode in prison and still solved the case. One memorable trick: knowing Rigsby was on his way to interview a suspect, Jane phoned the suspect using Rigsby's name and insulted him, provoking the suspect to attack Rigsby and get himself arrested... and put in the same prison as Jane, who could then talk to him in person.
• Arkady Balagan in Endgame suffers from agoraphobia, and refuses to leave his hotel. So he has Sam, and various hotel staff members, do his legwork for him.
• Sherlock Holmes, during "A Scandal In Belgravia", solved a case via webcam, which gave him a few quick glances at the crime scene.. While wearing nothing but a bedsheet.