Q = Phil Pearce (ok, not a Q)

There is no Q, so what could I do?

I decided to tell you about Phil Pearce. He appears first in Death in a Red Canvas Chair, where I describe him as thin as a stick with hair that looks like it was cut with nail scissors. His perfectly round face is dominated by a ski slope of a nose, with a bulbous end.  Rhe thinks he is the homeliest man she’s ever seen, but comments that when his smile lights up his face, he is almost winsome.

He has problems keeping his uniform hat above his ears, but between those ears is a sharp mind that he uses to keep up with the latest forensic and police procedures. Phil is an investigator, smart and intuitive, and also a computer whiz, much better at searching the web than Rhe, so the police department and Rhe depend on him to come up with answers. He sniffs out shell corporations in the first book, searches for missing children in the second, and in Death by Pumpkin, he creates a program to allow him to search for faces in crowd pictures taken by dozens of different cameras.

Phil is an essential part of any investigation.

Do you have a mental image of him? I do, but I won’t tell you which actor I’m thinking of.