Character Map equivalent?

Is there any OS X equivalent to Windows' "Character Map" application? I.e., an app that will allow me to select a font and which will then show the entire character set for that particular font and allow me to copy character(s) from it? I've just had an enormous amount of trouble trying to get some particular characters out of a specialised font - I had to boot up our old PC, find the characters with Character Map, paste them into CorelDraw, convert to outlines, export as AI and finally send it across to my Mac.

I've tried the Character Palette application but it's not very useful in this case, as I have no idea where the characters I want are located in the specialised font. If I knew, for example, that one of the characters I need replaced the exclamation mark or something like that it'd be no bother.

Maybe there's a 3rd party app available that would help me out here?