I'm playing around with putting together a timeline of fictional British detectives and when they were active. This is what I have so far:
Brother Cadfael - 1130's-1140's
Sherlock Holmes (original ACD stories) - 1880's-1920's
Amelia Peabody - 1880's-1920's (active in both Britain and Egypt)
Father Brown (book & 1970's show version) - 1910's-1930's
Phryne Fisher - 1920's (active in Australia, but with strong connections to Britain)
Hercule Poirot - most active 1920's-1940's, but continues into the 1970's
Lord Peter Wimsey - 1920's-1930's
Miss Marple - 1930's-1970's
Father Brown (modern TV version) - 1950's
Grantchester TV series, multiple "detectives" - 1950's-1960's
Inspector Morse - 1960's-1970's; 1980's-2000
Tom Barnaby - 1990's-2000's
Rosemary & Thyme - 2000's
Robbie Lewis - 2000's-2010's
Sherlock Holmes (modern BBC series) - 2010's
John Barnaby - 2010's-present
I'm sure there are zillions of others, from book series, TV shows and movies. These are just the ones I could think of and could remember roughly when they were active without needing to look it up.
I'd love to get suggestions to add to the list. Reasonably well known detectives that I forgot about and better dates for the ones I remembered are all welcome. I'd especially like to fill in that ~750 year gap between Brother Cadfael and Sherlock Holmes.
I'm thinking of this as something that might be useful for folks writing fic in any of these universes, and especially for folks doing crossovers, but mostly I'm doing it because it's fun. 😁