DCI Dinescu is No Stereotype
Crime fiction loves a damaged detective. The drinker. The insomniac. The rule-breaker who alienates colleagues, wrecks relationships, ignores procedure, and somehow remains indispensable to every major investigation. His career is usually one complaint away from disaster, yet instinct, stubbornness, and sheer force of personality keep him in the job. We know him the moment he appears on the page or screen.
It can make for great dramatic fiction, of course. It is also a version of policing that has become so familiar it is now almost expected. The broken detective has become a stock figure of the genre.
When I came to create my fictional detective, I wanted to take him in another direction. Part of that is simply personal taste, and part of it comes from my own background in policing. In the real world, the permanently drunken officer, or the reckless, insubordinate maverick who ignores procedure whenever it suits them, would soon be challenged and removed from the job, however clever they happened to be. Policing has moved a long way from the 1970s (think Gene Hunt in Life on Mars). Serious investigations depend on methodology, patience, judgement, teamwork, and sound decision-making. Theatrical rule-breaking and a hero’s instinctive hunch belong rather more comfortably in drama.
That was one of the reasons I created DCI Beniamin Dinescu as I did. I wanted a senior investigating officer who felt believable to me: grounded, substantial, and human. He carries authority naturally and approaches his work with seriousness and discipline, while retaining a dry sense of humour. His experiences have shaped him, and he has learned how to carry them.
Dinescu is a quiet man. He is thoughtful, difficult to fool, and comfortable allowing other people to fill the silence. He notices more than he says, watching what people do as closely as he listens to what they tell him. Detail matters to him, particularly the things people avoid saying and the moments when they believe nobody is paying attention.
His reserve can make him difficult to read. When DS Emily Summers first met him, she thought him aloof. Others see the stern expression, the imposing height, the scar, and the silence, and form their own conclusions. Over time, another side emerges: a strong moral centre, a dry wit, and a quiet dislike of bullies, show-offs, and people who mistake intimidation for strength.
These qualities also shape the way he leads an investigation. He is patient and steady under pressure. He understands the value of listening, of allowing evidence to develop, and of giving his team room to do their jobs. For Dinescu, leadership means setting the standard himself, supporting his team, and leading by example.
His past remains an important part of him. There are things he has lived through that have literally marked him, experiences he discusses only rarely, and memories he has learned to live with. They influence the man he has become without defining every part of his life.
Away from work, he is a husband and father. His home life matters deeply to him, and it reveals a warmth, wit, protectiveness, and loyalty that colleagues may only glimpse. Those who are observant will notice that I call him Dinescu when he puts on his police lanyard. When it comes off, I refer to him as Beniamin. The distinction is deliberate. Dinescu is the detective the world sees; Beniamin is the man his family knows.
Although he grew up in London, Dinescu has made the Chichester District his home. It is an area that suits the way he works: a small cathedral city surrounded by villages and countryside, with the South Downs to the north and the coast to the south. Policing here can take him from a city street to an isolated house or a close-knit rural community within the same investigation. His interest in people, relationships, and small details feels at home in a place where communities overlap, and lives intersect. Chichester and the Sussex Downs have become part of his world.
When readers meet DCI Beniamin Dinescu, I hope they find a man of character, intelligence, restraint, loyalty, and a strong moral compass. First impressions rarely tell the whole story with him. The more time readers spend in his company, the more of Beniamin they come to know.
Being human was always the point. Crime fiction may love its broken detectives, but DCI Beniamin Dinescu shows there is room for a different kind.
The Chichester Crime Mysteries can be purchased here.
Matthew J. Evans is a crime writer from Fishbourne near Chichester, West Sussex, UK.