Western culture has had a voracious appetite for heroes, fed by the pens of prolific writers whose audiences, given the right sort of hero, can remain loyal for decades. From Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey, Bulldog Drummond and Raffles, through James Bond and Smiley to Rambo and The Equalizer, popular fiction, television and film have been littered with heroes who, armed with moral fortitude and an unshakeable desire to see justice done and villains unmasked (not to mention, on occasion, a neatly concealed dagger or sub-machine-gun), will stride where others fear to tiptoe, coolly facing master criminals and beating them at their own game by virtue (sic) of a combination of superior intellect, muscle-power and firearms. Almost without exception they work alone, aided only by bemused and bewildered friends/ assistants to whom the complexities and details of the plot have to be explained (fortunately for the reader), either during the course of, or at the denouement of, each knotty problem.