Who the hell is Arbogast?

Raymond Chandler liked the name Arbogast so much that he used it at least three times (The High Window, "Trouble Is My Business," Farewell, My Lovely). The hero of S.J. Perleman's detective-story spoof "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer" has his office in the Arbogast building.

Milton Arbogast is a private investigator in Robert Bloch's novel Psycho and a movie based on it that you may have heard of. And the guy in the Studebaker who picks up the hitchhiking Vince Parry in David Goodis' Dark Passage? You guessed it: He's another in the honorable line of crime- and horror-fictional Arbogasts.

Arbogasts have been Frankish generals and Irish saints, but does anyone know why the humorously euphonious name (at least to non-Arbogasts) crops up so often in the work of celebrated crime writers? Have I missed any Arbogasts? What are your favorite odd character names in crime or other fiction?

  © Peter Rozovsky 2012