Text 41: Hercules Poirot

The famous fictional detective, the Belgian Hercules Poirot, made his first appearance in 1920 in The Mysterious Affair at Styles written by the best selling novelist Agatha Christie (1891—1976), and he appeared in many of her stories after that. The heyday of Poirot's popularity was the period between the two World Wars, but he is undergoing a revival in films, especially Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Plump, vain and dapper, Poirot has moustaches of which he is very proud and a weakness for exhorting people to use their 'little grey cells' (their brains).

Text 42: Inspector Jules Maigret

Inspector Maigret was created by novelist Georges Simenon in 1931 and has become one of the most popular fictional policeman in the world. He is the central figure in more than 500 novels and short stories written by Simenon. He is a calm, thoughtful and very painstaking detective, who never makes any spectacular arrests and does most of his work by talking to people. Through the stories the reader can form a very vivid picture of the seamy side of French life. A television series, starring Rupert Davies as Maigret, was made by the BBC in the 1960s.

Text 43: Perry Mason

The hard-hitting American defence lawyer Perry Mason was created by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889—1970). With his attractive and clever secretary Delia Street and his legman detective Paul Drake, Mason specialises in taking on clients accused of crimes and proving their innocence. His cases generally end in a dramatic courtroom scene in which Mason unmasks the true culprit. He first appeared in The Case of the Velvet Claws in 1933. In a popular television series of the 1960s, actor Raymond Burr played Perry Mason.

Text 44: Bank Bobbers

1. Klaus Schmidt, 41, burst into a bank in Berlin, Germany, waved a pistol, and screamed, "Hand over the money!" The staff asked if he wanted a bag, to which he replied, "Damn right it's a real gun!" Guessing Schmidt was deaf, the manager set off the alarm, saying later, "It was ridiculously loud, but he didn't seem to notice." After five minutes, punctuated by Schmidt's occasionally shouting, "I am a trained killer!" police arrived and arrested him. Schmidt then sued the bank, accusing them of exploiting his disability.

2. Five armed raiders burst into a bank in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Their demands for money were foiled when the staff calmly opened up the safes to reveal rows of empty shelves. Unfortunately, robbers were let down by their ignorance of the republic's finances. No money had been delivered to any of the banks in Baku for the previous two months.

3. John Nashid from New York held up a bank in Bronx and got away with $17,000. He then led the police on a five-mile car chase through back streets, throwing fistfuls of dollars out of the window in an attempt to hold up pursuit. To a certain extent it may have worked, as $6,300 of his haul wasn't recovered; but it also left a trail for the 12 cop cars chasing him to follow. Eventually Nashid ran from his car, dived through the window of a nearby nursing home, and was finally captured near a garbage can at the rear of the building. He had entered the bank draped in a sheet with holes cut out for his eyes, and was immediately nicknamed 'Casper the Ghost' by police.

4. Scottish bank robber Derek Macfadden was caught because he was too law-abiding. Gun in hand, he held up a bank at Giffnock, near Glasgow, and then raced off in his getaway car with £4,000. Despite being pursued by police, he halted at a red traffic light, where he was promptly arrested.

5. A man arrived at a bank in East Hartford, Connecticut. He was wearing a blue bandanna across his face and brandishing a pistol as he yanked at the door, only to find it was locked. The bank had actually closed at 3:00. After staring at the door for a few seconds, the man ran off into a small black car. Staff still inside the bank called the police, but no arrest was made.

Perhaps even later in arriving was the gang who spent the night cutting their way into a Lloyds bank in Hampshire, England. They cut bars with a hydraulic saw, wrenched out a security grille, and punched a hole through a wall. The only problem was that the bank was closed down four years earlier, and the building was empty.

6. From Florence, Italy, is a tale in which the guards got it wrong: security men were all too eager to help a man with his foot in a cast as he hobbled into a bank on metal crutches. Ignoring the alarm from the metal detector at the bank's entrance, they guided the apparently disabled man to a cashier's register. There he dropped his crutches, pulled a gun, and grabbed $40,000 before sprinting away.

7. Michael Norton stole two security cameras from the lobby of a bank. The cops were sure it was Norton, one of the neigbourghood characters, because the last pictures the cameras took showed him unscrewing them from the wall mountings. Detective Thomas Hickey set off to cruise the streets and eventually found Norton. "Hey", called Hickey. "Could you explain to me how come the bank has your picture?" "I didn't rob the bank," Norton protested. "I just took the camera." Oops...