Edgar Wield
Reginald Hill's DALZIEL AND PASCOE series
Silhouetted against the golden autumn sunlight, his face deep shadowed, he had the grace and proportions to model for the statue of a Greek athlete.
(Dialogues of the Dead, Harper Collins, p.28)
Traditionally, fictional heroes are supposed to be tall, dark and handsome. At six-foot-four, with a physique to die for, and a head of dark hair, Detective Sergeant Edgar Wield certainly meets most of the requirements. Nor is his face, once viewed, one ever to be forgotten:
Then he moved forward and his features took on detail, and you remembered that if this were a statue, it was one whose face someone had taken a hammer to.
(ibid.)
Each individual feature was only slightly battered, or bent, or scarred... but combined in one face they produced an effect so startling that Pascoe who met him almost daily was still amazed when he entered his room.
(A Pinch of Snuff, Harper Collins, p.26)
Wield's looks have been compared to craggy rock faces and ruined architecture, but when it comes to his heart, there is no doubting its substance. And where his ugliness makes him stand out in a crowd, it is his meticulous mind that makes him an outstanding detective.
Edgar Wield entered the Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and Pascoe series around the fifth book, but soon sealed his rightful place in the Holy Trinity with Superintendent Dalziel and Inspector Pascoe. His superbly organized mind—Dalziel once said his brain should be "picked in strong ale and sold to IBM"!—gentle demeanour and sensitivity make him an exceptional police officer. Detective Constable Shirley Novello once summed him up perfectly:
And Wield was... Wield. Unreadable as a Chinese encyclopaedia, but containing everything a cop needed to know. There were stories about his private life which might have washed away another man's career. But against that unyeilding crag, they broke and vanished back into the sea.
Word was that when Dalziel spoke, you obeyed; when Pascoe spoke, you listened; when Wield spoke, you took notes.
(On Beulah Height, Harper Collins, p.118)
Novello, incidentally, is also the only one who finds beauty in his face:
His eyes, she noticed for the first time, were rather beautiful, circles of Mediterranean blue round a dark grey centre set on a field of pristine white with not a red vein to be seen. It was like finding jewels in a ruin.
(ibid., p.119)
A Yorkshire native, Wield is an electroinic whiz and, after Andy Dalziel, arguably the most intelligent being within the pages of fiction. Which brings up the question as to why he seems to remain a perpetual sergeant. It all has to do with the aforementioned troubled private life.
The indications are that Wield joined the police to deny his homosexuality, his decision hastened by that fact that when he was a teenage draughtsman's apprentice, his boss attempted to take advantage of his confusion. Draughtsmanship's loss ended up being the Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary CID's gain. And to stem any speculations on his private life, he took to living his life in "compartments" for many years till he finally accepted what couldn't be avoided.
Though not officially "out", Wield made a conscious decision not to deny his sexual orientation. However, in an attempt to not tempt fate, he made an equally conscious decision not to pursue further glory in his career. And in boss Andy Dalziel he found an ally who will—if not in obvious style—back him and protect him from malicious eyes. Wield was single for a long time, but in Pictures of Perfection met a man he settled down with, the acidic, sarcastic Edwin Digweed, and the partnership seems to take on increasingly permanent hues.
Instead of beating about the bush, Wield can be summed up really simply: he is the quintessential "good man". It isn't like he hasn't got his faults, though. He has tampered with evidence at least once to save the skin of someone whom professed an inexplicable liking for. He also has a "thing" for his friend Inspector Pascoe's wife, Ellie (who happens to be the most annoying character in the books), once mentioning that she "makes an old queen want to be a lesbian"! However, when all is said and done, Wield is an amazingly easy character to love. This little exchange with a lab assistant who is injecting a small monkey certainly leaves no doubts as to why that is so:
He watched as a radiantly beautiful young woman... picked up a tiny monkey which threw its arms around her neck in a baby-like need for reassurance. Expertly, she disengaged it... and plunged a hypodermic needle into the base of its spine.
"Ouch," said Wield. "Doesn't that hurt?"
"Done properly, the animal hardly feels it," she reassured him...
"No, Jane," he said amiably, "it was you I meant."
(The Wood Beyond, Random House/Dell, pp.50-51)