Character List for The Last Policeman

Concord (NH) Police and Associates

Detective Henry “Hank” Palace—aka “Stretch”; the 27-year-old protagonist; recently promoted to detective in what remains of the Concord Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division; he’s the investigator on an apparent suicide, which he is convinced was actually murder

Officer Ritchie Michelson—police officer who found the corpse in a fast-food restaurant bathroom

Officer Trish McConnell—police officer who took witness statements and provided other assistance to Hank during his investigation

Detective Culverson—senior detective in the Criminal Investigations Division and the only African-American officer in the Concord Police Department

Detective McGully—another detective in the Criminal Investigations Division

Detective Andreas—another detective in the Criminal Investigations Division

Chief Ryan J. Ordler—Chief of Police for Concord Police Department; one of the very few members of the current department who knew Hank’s mother, Peg, when she worked there as a receptionist

Officer Frank Wilentz—administrative technology officer in the Records Unit for Concord Police Department

Denny Dotseth—Assistant Attorney General of Concord, NH

Dr. Alice B. Fenton—Chief Medical Examiner for New Hampshire; her offices (and the morgue) are in the basement of the Concord Hospital

Hank Palace’s Family and Friends

Nico Palace—Hank’s sister, 6 years younger (21 years old at the time of the story)

Derek Skeve—Nico’s husband, detained by National Guard and then missing

Nathanael Palace—Hank’s grandfather, a retired banker with whom he and Nico lived after their parents’ deaths; now deceased

Temple Palace—Hank’s father, a former English literature teacher; now deceased

Alison Koechner—Hank’s high-school sweetheart, who’s apparently now living in Boston and working for some top-secret national security agency

The Victim and Associates

Peter Anthony Zell—the original victim, an apparent suicide; he was an actuary and, more recently, a fraud investigator for Merrimack Life and Fire

Theodore Gompers—Zell’s boss at the Concord office of Merrimack Life and Fire

Naomi Eddes—Gompers’s secretary, who seems to be one of the few people who knows anything about Zell

Sophia (Zell) Littlejohn—Peter Zell’s sister, a midwife at a local private clinic

Erik Littlejohn—Peter Zell’s brother-in-law, Sophia’s husband; he’s Director of Spiritual Services at the Concord Hospital

Kyle Littlejohn—Sophia and Erik’s son and Zell’s nephew

Victor France—an informant who gives Hank the name of “the big guy” who was reportedly a friend of Zell’s

J.T. Toussaint—a high-school friend of Zell’s with whom Zell had recently reconnected and who might have been the last person to see Zell alive

Houdini—Toussaint’s dog

Other

Maia—the asteroid predicted to impact Earth in about six months