Arthur Prendergast is an agent with the British Security Service.
What Prendergast does is secret. "Ultra Top Secret Grade J, which is the highest rating of classification possible", we are told in the preamble to the first recorded adventure. "In fact, it should be noted, that there is not currently any personnel who has sufficient security clearance to read this document; therefore, whoever you are, in simply reading this preamble you are in breach of the Official Secrets Act."
Prendergast's work routinely, it seems, takes him into very nice places with expensive tastes in furnishing and he always feels out of place. "I grew up in Sheffield. My father was a postman", he explains to us. Interestingly, his at-best lower middle class upbringing should have made him feel equally as not-belonging in run-down dives and fleabag hotels but there he tells us he actually feels comfortable.
The events that make up the trilogy of adventures that exist about Prendergast come in the form of numerous "excerpts" of key people involved, each duly catalogued with impressive albeit largely obscure designations like "7110oootti". Many of these are taken from the personal logs of Prendergast but there are a good number from others. Most of these read as would any 'normal' book might but their identification as "excerpts" lend a fun degree of authority.
Good Line:
- About a politician: "Essentially he was your standard politician - if he possessed the intelligence required to be running this country, then he'd be doing something else."
- Dealing with a pathetic individual, Prendergast admits, "I needed to end this. I didn't want to put him out of his misery, I just want to end my misery."