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Detective Jim Grimmett

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Born forty-four years and one hundred and seventeen days before his first appearance in Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!, Detective Jim Grimmett had known right from the off that he would be an officer of the law. The gossip at Scotland Yard had it that on being born he rounded up the doctors, nurses and Mr and Mrs Grimmett and demanded the identity of the perpetrator…

Of course, he wasn’t called Detective Jim Grimmett then. That didn’t come for a few years, when as a toddler he made his first citizen’s arrest (and this story is documented fact, as researched by that book's author in the annals of Fleet Street). A vicious miscreant, having so far been successful in robbing a bank, made the mistake of making his getaway along a route too close to that of the young hero’s perambulator. One well-placed teddy bear later (young Jimmy had begun to think he might be growing out of it anyway) and the budding detective’s first apprehension, the first of so many hundreds to come, was accomplished (with the help of a paving stone and at the cost to the villain of a severely cracked head).

From then on he was known to the whole nation as Detective Jim Grimmett, even, oddly enough, for the few weeks after joining the force that his official rank was just constable. (His foiling an attempt by the infamous Manx Dan to steal the crown jewels quickly led the superintendents of Scotland Yard to correct the oversight.)