Claude, described as a friend who is 'always losing things'.Finley and Pip, occasional adversaries Finley is described as talking too much, while Pip is described as not talking a lot.Rosamond, strange owner of four cats (Super Hex, Big Hex, Plain Hex, and Little Hex.) It is revealed later on in the series that she has a crush on Nate.Oliver, described as a pest because he likes to follow people around.She also has a little brother named Harry. She is an African-American girl and one of Nate’s closest friends.

There are several recurring characters besides Nate and his dog Sludge. She 'named the other characters in the book after' other relatives: Annie, Rosamond, and Harry after mother Anne, sister Rosalind, and uncle Harry. The character Nate was 'inspired' by Nathan Weinman, father of Marjorie Sharmat, who had previously 'featured' her mother and sister in a novel. He solves crimes with his dog, Sludge, introduced in the second case, Nate the Great goes Undercover (1974). Nate is a detective, a child version of Sam Spade who wears a 'Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker hat' (the idea of illustrator Marc Simont) and loves pancakes. With Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's passing in 2019 Andrew Sharmat has continued writing the series with Nate the Great and the Earth Day Robot (2021). Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's husband, Mitchell Sharmat, passed away in 2011 and her sister, Rosalind Weinman, in 2006. The New York Public Library named Nate the Great Saves the King of Sweden (1997, number 19) one of its '100 Titles for Reading and Sharing'.

Nate the Great Goes Undercover was adapted as a television program and won the Los Angeles International Children's Film Festival Award. Regarding the series Marjorie Sharmat calls husband Mitchell 'always my first editor, and it's been a very happy collaboration'. Simont illustrated the first twenty books, to 1998, and the last ten were illustrated by Martha Weston, Jody Wheeler, or Olga and Aleksey Ivanov 'in the style of Marc Simont.' Some of the titles were jointly written with Sharmat's sister Rosalind Weinman, husband Mitchell Sharmat or sons Craig Sharmat and Andrew Sharmat. Sharmat and illustrator Marc Simont inaugurated the series in 1972 with Nate the Great, a 60-page book published by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. Nate the Great is a series of 30 children's detective stories written by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat featuring the eponymous boy detective, Nate the Great.

Nate the great marjorie w sharmat