Magician Detectives
According to tvtropes.org, a magician detective is not an actual magician with supernatural powers, but an illusionist or trickster whose knowledge of trickery and illusion gives them insight into how crimes may be covered up — and therefore solved — that wouldn’t occur to an average investigator. Deception is the latest show to feature this trope, and we already brought up The Mentalist while discussing that, but how many other stories can we find that use it?
Blacke’s Magic
This was a short-lived crime drama series from 1986 about a stage magician and his conman father who use their sneaky methods to solve mysteries. It starred Hal Linden and Harry Morgan as son and father duo Alexander and Leonard Blacke.
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This franchise includes two movies and a TV series based on those movies — all featuring special effects engineer Rollie Tyler (played by Bryan Brown in the movies and Cameron Daddo in the series) who uses his expertise to help the cops. Not exactly a magician — at least, not in a top-hat-and-wand kind of way, but still an illusionist of a sort, so I’m counting it.
The Great Merlini
This character, created by American mystery writer Clayton Rawson, is a detective and stage magician who appeared in several novels and short stories, using his knowledge of trickery to solve seemingly impossible crimes.
Jessica Blackwood
Staying in literature, Blackwood is an illusionist-turned-FBI agent whose knowledge of magic gives her an edge. The series is written by Andrew Mayne, although it doesn’t seem to have a Wikipedia page – I guess no one cares.
The Magician
This animated TV show is about a crimefighting magician, although it breaks the rules of the trope slightly by giving the titular character actual supernatural powers — but he does use stage props and trickery too. LS