Steve Hodge is an agent with the RCMP.
Actually he is a staff-sergeant in that organization. He works in the highly secret department in that group called the Security Services and more specifically in a sub-group known only as B-Operations (B-OPS). In Hodge's opinion, that group was "not the most super-secret section", despite the feelings of those not in the know, "but it was the operation branch where careers were made and lost". So far his career could be very much listed in the 'made' column and it would only get more solidly there as the recorded events we have of his unfold.
Since the actual work that Hodge does for B-OPS is all highly classified and thus unknowable to those friends he has outside the ranks, it is the fact that he is a member on paper at least of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which causes some of them to tease hims that he is just in fact a member of the cavalry, ready to ride to the rescue.
Hodge works closely with his partner in the group, Chris Proud, a man who is happily married, unlike Hodge who it appears is single with no serious prospects otherwise.
The activities of the adventures we have of Hodge and Proud all take place in a very short period of time in the late summer through early winter of 1976. It is during that time that the Soviet Union began to make a number of interesting (and to me frankly confusing) moves in Canada' capital. And joining the fun and games is the People's Republic of China, which until then had been staying out of most of the cloak and dagger activities in the country.
Good Lines:
- Said by Hodge: "In the Mounted Police one is never really out of s**t; it is just varying depths."
- When talking about an experienced agent in their organization, it was said of him he was that group's "version of George Smiley, as well as being an accomplished mushroom farmer".