Sherlock Holmes
After a lifetime of hearing about this guy, I decided it's time to read the originals. All in all, leaving their lineage out of the equation, I'm not overly impressed.
While his feats may have been extraordinary in their day, given the state of science at the time, I find many of them to be extremely simplistic. Often, for example, the situations will hinge around points that would have been caught by any half-way competent forensic technician, rating at most a few lines of dialogue between said CSI and the main character, rather than being the crux of the whole thing.
Don't get me wrong; the stories are certainly interesting reads. However leaving, as I said, the age of the texts out of the equation, they're not any better than one of the dozens of paperback detective novels that have adorned drug-store book racks over the years.