Who is the Sleuth?

From Merriam-Webster:

Sleuth: Detective; someone who looks for information to solve a crime

Synonyms: dick, gumshoe, investigator, operative, private detective, private eye, private investigator, Sherlock, sleuthhound

Must there be a sleuth in mystery novels? This is something I didn't consider when starting to write mysteries. In fact, I wrote quite a few until I came across a writing group that discussed elderly female sleuths. And suddenly, I realized I didn't have any sleuths at all.

In Who’ll Kill Agnes? Police Chief Donovan is a blithering idiot and his assistant Metson isn’t much better. But Donovan is hell bent in his ways and never follows through on anything. He thinks he knows who the guilty party is and never lets up on it. His wife, however, is the most intelligent character in the novel and has a different take on the title character. 

   In The Groundhog Lounge, Book Three of The Zoo Trilogy, Avery and Pam are sleuths of a sort who try to figure out who the killer is but that’s all they do—just conjecture. In the first two books of the trilogy (The Pig Farm and The Pool Lizards), Avery narrates what he sees going on and misses a lot.

But in my standalone mystery novels, The Chameleon Chase and Death by Salsa, the reader goes along with the story and may (or may not) figure out the plots and whodunits. The private detective in The Chameleon Chase is rather a shady character himself determined to win a big fee. But does he solve the mystery?

 And, should a sleuth always be the main character?

Do authors have favorites among their own books?

The standard response to this is usually, "The book I'm writing now." That's true for me. I always love what I'm working on at the moment. But as I look back on the books I've published there are two that stand out in my mind, maybe because they have lived within me for a very long time.

Whenever I think about A Caribbean Summer written under my romance pen name Tricia Lee, I immediately wonder just where in the story my two protagonists are at the moment. Of course, I know how they end up but I spent so much time thinking and writing this book that certain scenes pop into my mind and I get homesick for them at times. Crazy? More than likely. I love the characters. I love the setting. Sometimes I wish I were still writing it. Okay, still writing it is not quite true. I wish I could be there with them again in that time and space when certain scenes were created. The book itself gives me great joy.

The Chameleon Chase, written under my mystery pen name Lea Chan, was not meant to be a dark comedy like my other Lea Chan novels. From my point of view it isn't a comedy but if readers think that it is, that's fine with me. I conceived it long before I wrote the others. After I had written it and left it for many years, I came back to reread it and couldn't believe I had written something like that. One scene in the book surprised even me although I knew it was coming. The inspiration for the novel came after watching an old Barnaby Jones episode in the 1980s featuring actress Mariette Hartley. But as my fantasy evolved, it had nothing to do with that storyline. I fantasized so much about it until when I finally started writing it in the 1990s, my original ideas had dissipated. The novel also has scenes on my fictional island of Palmaltas with a romantic subplot. Palmaltas is a magical place for me.

I wonder--do other writers have favorites among the books and stories they have written?