I added a little flourish about him having cats named after tv detectives, so that he has at least a little responsibility and also because when he retires you know he's going to wind up a crazy cat lady type.

[b]Name:[/b] Isembard "Izzy" Keith

[b]Age:[/b] 43

[b]Gender:[/b] Male

[b]Sexual orientation:[/b] Heterosexual

[b]Role:[/b] Detective

[b]Appearance:[/b] Standing at about 5'7, his posture always slightly hunched, his frame sharp and gaunt, Izzy isn't a particularly commanding figure in a room. His hair; an unruly and greying reddish-brown mess, is combed desperately into something resembling a side-parting, while his moustache; much more obviously red, was trimmed and maintained with more care. His deep brown eyes peer out from behind half-frame glasses, and oftentimes there will be a hand-rolled cigarette clutched between his lips.
Izzy has a very uncomplicated dress sense: he always wears either a dark grey or black suit, a white or grey shirt, and a black tie. Despite wearing a suit, though, he always seems to look disheveled: like his commute to work involves falling down a flight of stairs in a gale.
[b]
Skills/specialisations:[/b] Izzy's biggest asset is the network of informants and contacts he built up in his years working vice: a fistful of small-time career criminals, low level drug dealers and sex workers who for a variety of reasons owe him allegiance or favours.
He isn't a marskman by anyone's standards, but he is a perfectly adequate shot with his sidearm, and he keeps a 12-guage shotgun locked in the trunk of his car. Just in case.

[b]Biography:[/b]

Izzy was born the only child of aspirational middle-class parents, whose marriage quickly collapsed under the weight of a new child. He grew to resent his mother, for everything from his archaic name (she dreamed of him becoming an architect) to driving away his father, who Izzy idolized. His father had been a police officer; and on the weekends and holidays Izzy spent with him they would sit around his sparse apartment, religiously watching old procedural cop shows. His dad would appear, to Izzy, to be a psychic or a genius, preempting every plot twist and pointing out inaccuracies in the stories or techniques. So, when teachers would ask the little children what they wanted to be when they grew up, obviously Izzy knew exactly: he was going to be a detective.

Reality didn't immediately live up to his childhood aspirations, and after dropping out of college, Izzy middled along through the police academy, succeeding more by sheer force of will than any particular skill or talent. He graduated unremarkably: his mother not attending out of anger that he had snubbed "A real education" in favour of law enforcement, tears of pride welling in his father's eyes, and went on to patrol the streets of New Bath.
Izzy's beat found him flung straight from the 'burbs into the heart of the inner city, but he adjusted pretty quickly. Still never excelling, he built a reasonable reputation for himself in the department as a reliable, principled officer, and was eventually offered his dream promotion. The opportunity to be a detective in the vice squad.

That was, unfortunately, the beginning of the end for Izzy. He quickly found himself struggling not to burn out in the face of some of the ugliest parts of society. His youthful idealism was swiftly crushed under the weight of battered sex workers and territorial dealers. He hit breaking point when, on a short term undercover assignment in a neighbouring jurisdiction, his father died suddenly and he was unable to visit him in the last days of his life, or even attend the funeral. Izzy didn't react well, using his undercover persona's criminal access to develop a drug problem, and staking out a new reputation for himself as "high-functioning cocaine addict".  Over the next decade he slowly spiraled out of control, growing ever more depressed and misanthropic. Izzy had never married, barely pursued romantic or social relationships, and after his parents had died he had no family to speak of; so he felt largely guiltless as his habits grew ever more self-destructive.

Within about the space of a month everything suddenly came to a head. First, Izzy was placed under official investigation over small amounts of drugs and money going missing from evidence lockers. Then, during a stakeout, he pulled his gun on a high-school student; just a kid who happened to be walking home down the wrong street. The kid protested his innocence a little too aggressively, and Izzy pistol-whipped him, breaking his nose. He was suspended over the assault, miraculously without criminal charges, and although everyone in the investigation was certain it was Izzy who had been stealing evidence, they couldn't prove anything and had to drop the case.

Returning after his suspension, he found himself persona non grata in his department. They couldn't fire him, though, since no charges had been brought over anything he had done, and none of the other units or departments were particularly willing to take him as a transfer. Instead, through some bureaucratic wrangling, and thanks largely to his reputation not having quite reached the newly arrived head, they had him transferred to the homicide team. Downplaying his spotted record, his superiors wrote glowing references highlighting how Izzy's experience would be a great asset to the new team, and how he was such a dedicated, hard-working officer etc etc. Privately though, they all thought that as soon as his new boss found out about him he'd be relegated to a desk job. They decided that pushing paper for someone half his age, making twice his salary, would be a suitable purgatory in which he could reflect on his sins.

Isembard isn't an unpleasant man, though. While he is no longer anything but cynical about individual people, he still fervently believes in the justice system and the law as a force for good. He has a tendency to be rather blunt, to the extent that his old colleagues tried to stop him from interviewing victims or their families, because he was the opposite of a comforting presence. Deep down somewhere he is still capable of great empathy, but years and years of seeing terrible, unjust things have built a very big wall around anything resembling vulnerability. All he really does outside of work is drink, take cocaine (although he is now trying to kick that habit), and sit alone in his sparse apartment, watching old cop shows and listing all the plot holes to his two grey tabbies; [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Morse_%28TV_series%29]Morse[/url] and [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Touch_of_Frost]Frost[/url].