Guest Post: Alex Cross Sherlock Holmes and Virgil Tibbs

Alex Cross joins other popular black detectives appearing over the decades. One of these black detectives is Virgil Tibbs. Although Alex Cross has admirable traits, Virgil Tibbs stands out with much more. One outstanding thing about Virgil Tibbs is that he is ranked 19th in the American Film Institutes's listing of greatest heroes in the history of American cinema. A second outstanding thing about Virgil Tibbs is that he is a brilliant Sherlock Holmes in his world.

  To show that Mr. Tibbs is Sherlock Holmes, let's look at Inspector Lestrade, a character in the Holmes stories. This dull inspector is planets away from having the mental abilities of Holmes and badly needs The Great Detective to solve crimes that he can't.

  The Southern version of Inspector Lestrade is Chief Gillespie of the first Virgil Tibbs movie, In the Heat of the Night. Chief Gillespie knows that Virgil Tibb's is the only hope of a murder being solved.When Tibbs is about to board a train to exit the South he hates. Chief Gillespie tells him: “You'll stay here if I have to have your chief remind you what he told you to do. But I don't think I have to do that, you see? No. Because you're so damned smart. You're smarter than any white man. You're just gonna stay here and show us all. You could never live with yourself unless you could put us all to shame. You wanna know something, Virgil? I don't think that you could let an opportunity like that pass by.” The truth of that last sentence of Gillespie results in Tibbs ignoring the train and staying on to handle the case. Just like Holmes who has to show he's much smarter than every cop in Scotland Yard by solving a crime that baffles them.  

Tyler Perry as Cross

  When it comes to deducing and coming to correct conclusions, Tibbs is a Sherlock Holmes who leaves Gillespie and his police force far behind. One scene in the movie has Tibbs examining a man and then spotting chalk underneath the man’s fingernails. The chalk beneath the fingernails is a vital clue that Chief Gillespie and the police force missed. “Well, Virgil, nobody threw your brains to the hogs, that's for damn sure.” Tibbs is told. Afterwards, Chief Gillespie attempts to mimic the Sherlockian ability of Virgil Tibbs and concludes that his own deputy is the murderer. This completely incorrect deduction causes Tibbs to laugh in disbelief. 

                                              

  Like Holmes, Virgil Tibbs can handle himself in a fight. When thugs attack Tibbs for returning a slap from a white man, Tibbs effectively fights them off until the Chief arrives Virgil Tibbs of In the Heat of the Night therefore stands next to the BBC's Sherlock, as an updated version of Sherlock Holmes. 

Another Black Sherlock: Sheridan Hope:
 THE INVENTORS GAME: "AN INTERESTING TAKE ON THE WELL-KNOWN DETECTIVE" 

Screenwriter and producer Barry Pearson

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Now on Amazon: THE DOGS OF DEVONSHIRE : A 221B Sheridan Hope Thriller   

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A reproduced post, with permission of the author, Demetrius Sherman.