Richard Prince is a police detective.
He is a Detective Superintendent with the Lincolnshire police department. He has obviously been with the department for some time to have risen to the rank that he has and to earn the respect and reputation that he enjoys.
Two years before we first encounter him, Prince lost his wife and 8-year-old daughter were killed in a motor accident, being hit by an army lorry. He was left with his now 3-year old son, Harry, who had not gone on the outing due to a cold. As a result, Prince molds his police work around being the best father he can and spending as much time as he can with the boy, letting work often take second place.
The year of our introduction to Prince is 1942 and England is, of course, very much in the war with Germany. Because Prince had a critical job with the police, he was needed more at home than on the war effort but as we will see in the adventures told of him, his expertise as a detective will prove invaluable in the hunt for both spies infiltrating his country and as an agent in foreign lands.
In the first meeting of Prince we are told by the Chief Constable in the area where Prince was stationed that "Richard Price was the best detective on his force - indeed, by far the best one he had ever worked with". Prince was said to be "notably younger than .. expected, probably no more than his mid-thirties". He possessed "matinee idol looks" as well as "a presence about him, and a purposeful stare" though "with a very slight air of superiority about him".
It will be shortly into the first recorded adventure, after Prince is pulled from his normal police detective work to assist in the hunt for a German spy and the British traitor working with him, that Prince is asked to take his talents overseas on behalf of MI6, "on secondment, I think you'd call it".
Prince will find that he is as good as an undercover operative in foreign lands as he is as a detective back home.
Playing a major role in Prince's life from their meeting in that first adventure through the rest of the adventures is Hanne Jakobsen, a Danish police officer who will come to work with Prince and then soon become far more important to him, both professionally and personally.