Arkham Detective (character)

The Arkham Detective is a character created by American author and filmmaker Byron Craft for his eponymous series of Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Detective, whose name is never revealed, made his debut appearance in the 2015 novella Cthulhu's Minions.
==Overview==
A hard-boiled detective in the employ of the Prohibition-era Arkham Police Department, the Detective spends his time working for the department's Mythos Division, a subdivision of that agency dedicated to combatting the many and varied supernatural threats which plague the small New England city of Arkham. Despite his lack of jurisdiction outside of his home town, he has been known to travel to other notable Lovecraft Country locations, including Innsmouth and Dunwich. He has been stated to have lost two different partners in the twelve months leading up to the first story.
The Detective was once married with a son but, due to the long hours he spent on the job and with his drinking buddies in the town's many Speakeasies, his wife left him, taking the child with her. He has not spoken to either of them since.
During one of his investigations, a murder-kidnapping which took him to the coastal town of Innsmouth by the sea, the Detective rescued a seven-year-old girl named Allison. The terrors they experienced that night created a strong bond between the two, and he soon adopted the girl. While he is at work his landlady, an elderly, good-natured woman by the name of Mrs. Trumble, takes care of Allison, and has even gone so far as to convert her spare room into a play area for her.
The Detective later met and married a woman named Nora Bishop and, together with Allison, Mrs. Trumble, and an adopted dog named Robber, proceeded to carve out a new family life for himself. Later still, his biological son Elijah was dumped on him by his first wife for reasons unspecified, and he took in Alvin Nash, a street urchin who had assisted him in the past.
In Who Stole the Necronomicon?, we learn that the Detective left the force and set himself up as a private investigator using some of the fortune he came across in The Dunwich Dungeon. He had also decided to embark on a carrer in amateur writing, using his past experiences with the occult as the basis for his stories.
==History==
The first case we see the Detective investigating involved ferocious creatures dubbed Pilot Demons which were attempting to awaken an ancient entity slumbering beneath the streets of Arkham. He defeated the monsters, but his house was destroyed in the process (: Cthulhu's Minions).
A short while later, he was assigned the case of a murdered down-and-out, which soon expanded to include a kidnapping by Deep Ones and a plot to summon an abomination from beneath the Innsmouth coast. It was during these events that the Detective met and adopted Allison (: The Innsmouth Look).
Mere months after the Innsmouth incident, the Detective tracked and defeated a Night Gaunt which was siphoning the life energy of the citizens of Arkham in an effort to return to its home in the Dreamlands. During the course of his investigations, he met and fell in love with a woman named Nora Bishop, who subsequently moved in with him, and gained a new partner, rookie cop Matthew Bell (: The Devil Came to Arkham).
Some time later, after having married Nora, the Detective and Bell investigated the disappearance of Ian Woodhead, a government agent who the Detective worked with on the Innsmouth mission. Tracking the last survivor of an ancient, malevolent race to the decaying town of Dunwich, the two manage to thwart a foul plan to re-propagate the species and rescue their former comrade, at the same time retrieving Old Whateley's stash of gold (: The Dunwich Dungeon).
In the aftermath of the Dunwich incident, the Detective was sent on what he believed was a plum assignment escorting a prisoner to New York aboard the once-luxurious Arkham Express. On the return leg of the trip, however, he encountered an incursion of Doels. With the assistance of an inter-dimensional police officer, he manages to eliminate the Doels and seal the portal which allowed them entry (: Death on the Arkham Express).
As the Prohibition laws are repealed, the Detective, having left the force to work as a private investigator, helps his former colleague Detective Sergeant Matthew Bell with the case of a bizarre murder and a stolen book of forbidden knowledge. The trail leads him to confront a descendent of Keziah Mason and her vicious rat familiar (: Who Stole the Necronomicon?).
==Appearances== 
* Cthulhu's Minions (2015)
*The Innsmouth Look (2016)
*The Devil Came to Arkham (2017)
*The Dunwich Dungeon (2017)
*Death on the Arkham Express (2019)
*Who Stole the Necronomicon? (2020)
*Arkham After Dark
*The Comatose Man
==Trivia== 
*The Detective was mentioned to have been one of the cops on scene in the aftermath of Wilbur Whateley's disastrous attempt to steal the Necronomicon from Miskatonic University in August 1928 (: The Dunwich Dungeon).
* Despite having married Nora Bishop between the events of The Devil Came to Arkham and The Dunwich Dungeon, no mention is made of the Detective having ever obtained a divorce, despite his first wife passing on custodianship of their child to him later in the series; in light of this, it is entirely possible that the Detective is a bigamist.
* The pseudonym used by the Detective to publish his stories is given as Byron Craft, the real-world creator of the Arkham Detective series.
==Gallery==
Arkham Detective.jpeg|As depicted by Marko Serafimovic
Arkham Detective 2.jpeg
Arkham Detective 3.jpeg|As depicted by Marko Serafimovic
Category:Humans
Category:Characters Originating From Expanded Mythos Works