Inspector Bill Mercer
Inspector Bill Mercer is a detective created by the British crime and mystery writer Michael Gilbert. He is the leading character in the 1972 novel The Body of a Girl and appears later in at least three short stories. On the first page of the novel "Detective Inspector William Mercer received... confirmation of his promotion to chief inspector and his appointment in charge of the CID at Stoneferry on Thames, which is one of the larger upriver stations of Q Division of the Metropolitan Police."
He was a man in his late twenties or early thirties, with a lot of dark hair, worn rather long,, and a thick, sensual face. His appearance was not improved by a puckered white scar which started at the cheekbone and gathered up the corner of the left eye so that it seemed permanently half closed. He had thick shoulders, a barrel of a chest, and legs disproportionately long for such a body. [1]
As Gilbert himself described him in a introduction to a 1997 collection of stories:
He once shared with Hazlerigg the rank of Chief Inspector, but this is about the only thing that he did share. While Hazlerigg plays the game according to the rules, Mercer is prepared to bend any rule that gets in the way of his single-minded pursuit of his objective.... He was going to get his revenge for that scar, whatever the cost.[2]
- ↑ The Body of a Girl, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, page 7
- ↑ The Man Who Hated Banks, Crippen & Landru, Norfolk, Virginia, 1997, page 8