Clues in the baggage: Why we’re drawn to damaged detectives

Many on-screen detectives, like Mona Singh's character in Kohrra 2 and Kareena Kapoor Khan's in The Buckingham Murders, have troubled pasts that affect their personal lives.

The 'Defective Detective' trope originated in late-19th-century fiction with Edgar Allan Poe's C Auguste Dupin and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, whose flaws were treated as genius side effects.

After World War I and the Great Depression, hard-boiled crime fiction introduced cynical detectives like Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, shaped by societal trauma and distrust.

The persistent trope suggests that trauma and flaws help detectives solve cases, but they remain broken to fuel future stories.