Advice on this detective/workaholic character?

Hello! I'm creating an action-fantasy kind of comic, and one of the major characters is a detective. I have researched a bit on the topic, and wondering if there is any suggestions or improvements that can be given.

She is a homicide detective who's been recently hired by... essentially, the government, to uncover what happened to two missing people (these people are linked to said government). However, the protagonist is also trying to find these two (the detective is unaware of this, as she doesn't know the protagonist is a secret agent working for the opposing side)

The detective comes from a town which is shrouded in constant night, and said town has a fairly moderate-high crime rate which mainly consists of murders. Because of this, she is on her job a lot, and could be considered a 'workaholic,' though 1. I don't exactly know how to convey this with her occupation, and 2. I'm not sure if this is accurate to real detectives. I reckon she would behave cool, collected, and reserved, though due to the workaholic behaviour, she is prone to end up becoming incredibly stressed. Guess you could say she's a tired woman, lol.

I can explain more if required, but I'm pretty sure this is all the information really needed. All help and advice are appreciated, thanks heaps!

 

I'll see if I can find out from my collab partner.

 

There is a lot of detective fiction out there to pull from. The workaholic aspect is putting the job above everything else. Bosch is a good example of the type. His passion for resolving cold cases, cost him his marriage, and almost cost him his relationship with his daughter.

 

Thank you heaps!

Ahh, so they'd value work above everything, including events like, perhaps, anniversaries, their own health, or spending time with family and friends in general? This helps a lot, thanks lots. I'll look up Bosch for further reference

This is a pretty good idea, actually! This trait doesn't fit the detective we're talking about, but since she is not on the case herself, perhaps I could implement this trait into another character, haha. Thanks for the suggestion!!

 

Amazon turned the books into a series on prime.

I would consider Columbo a none workaholic detective, he was simple a pitbull that didn't let go, and presented himself in a way that people under estimated him.

 

Ooh! A series! Unfortunately, I'm not subscribed to Amazon Prime...

I'll also check Columbo out, for the underestimation part. Thanks a ton for letting me know of these detectives!

 

I think bosch is in the free section of prime, good luck on your project.

 

Ohh, free? I'll check it out then. Thank you!

 

Kid detectives, twin detectives... the list goes on I'm sure. Basically as many kinds of detectives as there are kinds of people. Oh, supernatural detectives...

 

We forgot wizard detectives.

 

A whole variety of detectives!

 

Apologies for the delay. I wanted to discuss this with Dawn.
So if the protag is a secret gov agent who is the detective?

Detectives.
The case will take over her entire life. Family life suffers and she will work herself into exhaustion. HEr focuss on the case is like a laser beam.
Personal life becomes frenzied. Like Craving chocolate but they can't get at the chocolate AND the clock is ticking.
Show she is a workaholic
ex. Someone she really likes (he/she) asks her out for a date ... a long-awaited invitation (could be a colleague also working on the case) she lies says she has a prior engagement but while he goes off home/socializing she goes back to work. Maybe searching for leads on the Police database, looking at CCTV or whatever.
She's frenzied inside. So they have no idea where the missing people are and at this point, we have no idea if they are dead or alive?

SO she could also be looking for a murderer? HEr driving force is to find the missing people..
Discern motive: Motive points to the who
No Motive: She is dealing with a sociopath.

Hope this helps. These are just notes

 

The protagonist isn't a government agent, she is an agent working for a resistance group -- in short, against the government. The detective, however, works for the government, if that makes sense.

WOAH, you've done a good job at simplifying how a workaholic behaves, thank you very much for this!! I understand it lots. So, working constantly, finding every excuse to evade time off, despite the fact that they are tired. Understood. Perhaps, she does more than what she's been asked to do?

Yep, no idea where these people are. It's not known what happened to them or where they are now, so I suppose if it was found out that they were murdered... her next goal would be to find the murderer.

The delay is fine! These are all helpful notes, I thank you and Dawn very much!!

 

You can go farther with it, figure out what inner motives drive her to be a workaholic. From my own observations of obsessed people, it could be something like she feels the need to figure everything out, or maybe to understand other people's motives or reasons for doing what they do. Maybe as a child she felt like certain elements in her life were beyond her control and she was in situations a lot that didn't feel safe, and she started trying to understand everything and everyone. And now it dominates her life (it's usually those childhood coping mechanisms that stick with us and drive us all our lives). And this doesn't let her rest or relax or do anything fun or recreational. Even if she takes a vacation she finds herself studying clues in stores or on beaches, ferreting out reasons for everything. Her therapists have told her she needs to learn to relax, and even given her techniques, but they don't work. She only feels like she's accomplishing anything worthwhile when she's examining everything and factoring the clues to discover people's underlying psychology. Maybe she feels like it can keep her one step ahead of them, and she feels the absolute need to do that.

I wouldn't epxlain this in much detail if at all in the story, but you should understand her reasoning (or obsessions) and show her constantly doing what she's driven to do. Let people reconstruct why from the behavior. And maybe at certain point when things start to come together for her and she pieces together the suspects motives, or figures out certain important things, she gets a rush of satisfaction (a rare thing, and necessary). Maybe this is the only thing that allows her to then relax for a while, but of course it also opens the next aspect of the case and the enedless research, so even as she relaxes briefly she's already thinking about the next stage of the investigation. And of course it's cost her every relationship she's ever had. Maybe all her boyfriends felt like she was prying too much into their psychology or their reasons for everything, and was too insistent on always knowing the why for every behavior. That would feel pretty invasive, and drive people away. But it hounds her constantly like a form of OCD.

 

True, she does need a reason as to why she is this way. Your suggestion of being too interested in other people's psychology sounds like a pretty good one. What if she behaved like this even with her co-workers... perhaps I could piece this together with the motivation I have for her currently.

The only kind of satisfaction comes from piecing things together, and even then, the satisfaction would fade out quick and she'd just continue searching... that's real deep. These ideas and suggestions are awesome, thanks for sharing!!

 

So many thousands of workaholic detectives that people reading your character will be almost exclusively seeing them through the trope, not starting from human principles. Just saying. If you want to write a workaholic detective you should read and watch good but cliched literary detectives, probably more so than original research, because you will be writing a straight down the line archetype. That might not have been the idea but its where you probably have to take it, unless you take the advice above and give it an original twist, like a *lazy* detective.

Examples from which you can get the idea of the archetype from the first half an hour of reading/watching: Luther (TV, BBC), trashes everything including his own career and colleagues lives in pursuit of murderers; Philip Marlowe (books and films, also on Audible), lives an essentially disregarded and abandoned life because of a lonely, principled dedication to clients he doesn't even like; Pacino in Heat (film), precisely as monomaniacally focused as his criminal prey.

Now personally I like cool, slightly mercenary detectives who aren't workaholics, they're in it for the thrill and the cash. The Continental Op for example. The Op is really good for very short, concise and precise take on Pinkerton-esque private dick work. No fat on those stories. The Op also has some of the lazy detective elements, the, 'thank God this looks like being an easy one,' lines. Personally I feel too many authors interpret 'workaholic' as 'laser focused on the job and cares about it more than anything in the world,' whereas us real workaholics are often bored with our work, love the down-time, but just can't quite manage a work-life balance because a whisper at the back of our minds makes us feel guilty whenever we try to down tools.

Edit: On that last point, the fundamental point to convey for any workaholic is pourous boundaries between work and life, with that latter constantly seeping into the former and poisoning it, like sepsis. A clearly stress related ailment is also inevitable. Just don't make it alcholism. Even if writing to the archetype, the world doesn't need more tough wino detectives. Try stomach ulcers, cluster headaches, recurring nausea, panic attacks during down times when no-one is watching.