With his shock of fiery red hair and keen, piercing gaze, Zachariah Gnedder cuts an unmistakable figure even in a crowd. Growing up as the introvert in a boisterous family of merchants, young Zach preferred burying his nose in mystery novels over joining his siblings in roughhousing. The imaginative lad took particular delight in mapping out the fine details and pieces of evidence that allowed literary sleuths to ultimately crack each baffling case. By 10 years old, he was out-deducting solutions well before each book's conclusion.
Zach's lifelong love affair with the art of investigation only grew through his academic years. The intellectually-gifted pupil devoured university coursework not just on criminology and forensics, but also psychology, body language analysis, and the emerging sciences behind lie detection and statement analysis. His professors marveled at the strange young savant's ability to deduce someone's occupation, personality quirks and recent life experiences based solely on subtle environmental clues.
After a brief stint as a quasi-celebrity crime blogger and consultant, Zach realized his true calling pulled him to more hands-on detective work. He launched the Gnedder Investigations firm in his mid-20s, quickly earning a reputation as one of the most brilliantly incisive and unshakable private eyes in operation. From insurance fraud to embezzlement, missing person's cases to settling disputing wills, if foul play was potentially involved virtually no puzzle proved too complex for Zach's deductive reasoning to decrypt.
His most indispensable tool is his loyal Jack Russell terrier companion, Max. Zach realized early on that the energetic pup's heightened sense of smell, hearing and emotional intelligence served as the perfect real-world data set for his own situational analyses. To this day, an investigation doesn't feel complete for Zach unless his canine sidekick has had a chance to sniff around the environment and subjects in question.
For all his professional success, Zach's personal life has been tumultuous at best. His college sweetheart marriage to the wealthy Charlotte Hollingsworth ended in devastating betrayal, with Zach discovering his wife had been brazenly unfaithful for years. He fled his entire old life in the wake of the bitter divorce, throwing himself into his work as a form of therapy.
It was during this emotional nadir that Zach chanced to cross paths with the dazzling and mysterious Lucia Rosario while on a missing person's case. Her bewitching looks coupled with her skillful capability for manipulating human emotions sent Zach's finely-tuned senses into delirious overdrive. For once, the great detective was hopelessly baffled - perhaps she'd managed to locate his own blindspot. The pair's electric chemistry has since blossomed into a passionate if complicated romance.
Despite his diminutive frame, Zach possesses the courage of a lion and an unshakable sense of ethics. He's shown capability for ruthless physicality when the situation demands, having trained extensively in mixed martial arts and defensive tactics. Let his tousled hair, restless eyes and quirky sense of humor not fool you - this eccentric sleuth is a relentless savant when it comes to separating fact from deception and exposing the unvarnished truth.