Detective Inspector G. Lestrade ( /lɛˈstreɪd/ or /lɛˈstrɑːd/)[1] is a fictional character appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lestrade is a determined but conventional Scotland Yard detective who consults Holmes on many cases, and is the most prominent police character in the series.

Lestrade has been played by many actors in adaptations based on the Sherlock Holmes stories in film, television, and other media.

[3] It is observed by Holmes that Lestrade and another detective, Tobias Gregson, have an ongoing rivalry, and he identifies the two as "the pick of a bad lot.

"[9] By the time of the story "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", Lestrade is a regular evening visitor at 221B Baker Street, and "his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes" according to Watson.

No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow, there's not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand".

He was described by H. Paul Jeffers in the following words:He is the most famous detective ever to walk the corridors of Scotland Yard, yet he existed only in the fertile imagination of a writer.

We do not know his first name, only his initial: G. Although he appears thirteen times in the immortal adventures of Sherlock Holmes, nothing is known of the life outside the Yard of the detective whom Dr. Watson described unflatteringly as sallow, rat-faced, and dark-eyed and whom Holmes saw as quick and energetic but wholly conventional, lacking in imagination, and normally out of his depth – the best of a bad lot who had reached the top in the CID by bulldog tenacity.

Lestrade works with Holmes as early as A Study in Scarlet (which according to Leslie S. Klinger takes place in 1881[16]) and continues to do so as late as "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" (which is set in 1902).

However, according to the book The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany by Roger Johnson and Jean Upton (Holmesian scholars and members of The Baker Street Irregulars), Arthur Conan Doyle's daughter Dame Jean Conan Doyle stated that her father pronounced the name with a long a sound (as "Le'strayed").

[58] Similar to Lestrade, Japp is described as "a little, sharp, dark, ferret-faced man" in Christie's 1920 novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles.