We thought long and hard about the different genres that this list might include. And, certainly, if there are two amateur detectives working on a case together, like Frank and Joe Hardy, they are also doing so as partners and without sidekicks. This rules out some big pairings, like McNulty and Moreland, Booth and Brennan, Cagney and Lacey, and Mulder and Scully. Now, if the two collaborators are fellow police officers of equal rank in a department and they are paired on cases together (or from different departments brought on to a case to work on it from different angles), they are also “partners” and not sidekicks. Three very different shows, all excellent for very different reasons.) Same with Maddie Hayes and David Addison (if all those names don’t ring a bell, go watch Terriers, Psych, and Moonlighting, respectively. Nor is Burton “Gus” Guster Shawn Spencer’s sidekick. Britt Pollack is not Hank Dolworth’s sidekick. If two people open a PI business together, even if one of them is clearly the protagonist and the other is supporting, there is no “sidekick” in this dynamic. But the most difficult thing about putting together this list was making sure that none of the assembled sidekicks are actually, technically partners with their detectives. The detective, the one who has the sidekick, is probably the story’s clear protagonist. So let us define the qualifications for sidekicking. And it’s necessitated a lot of thought about what it means to actually be a sidekick, versus the other archetypes that frequently appear in the genres where you expect to find sidekicks. This list spans books, film, and television. The time has come to do a giant, comprehensive ranking of the detective sidekicks that have graced crime fiction. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyes.
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