Connie Murphy

Murphy handles the cases nobody at the station wants to explain in a report. When a body turns up in an impossible way, she calls Harry. She pays for the consult, demands results and won't take vague answers.

Their deal has an unwritten rule: Harry solves it, and Murphy decides what goes on paper.

Murphy sees things she can't explain, case after case, and still refuses to fully believe in magic. It's how she protects herself and her job. That causes friction with Harry, who loses patience when she asks for a "normal" explanation for a werewolf attack.

Off the job, Murphy is divorced and raising her daughter, Anna. The grind leaves little room for anything else, and she keeps her feelings for Harry to herself. The two live in a gray zone neither one settles.

The show's Murphy differs from the books' version, starting with her name: Connie, not Karrin. Valerie Cruz plays a more guarded lieutenant who keeps Harry at arm's length. Jim Butcher warned that the show was an alternate world with the same background and different events, and Murphy is one of the places where it shows most.

Across the 12 episodes, the cases run from ghosts to vampires. Murphy keeps calling Harry, and keeps not wanting to hear everything he knows.

In "Hair of the Dog," Murphy is the one who brings Harry a string of bizarre deaths, and the victims turn out to be werewolves. In the last episode, "Second City," her father arrives in Chicago with a grievance against Harry, and Murphy is caught between them.

In the books she's Karrin Murphy, head of the Chicago police's Special Investigations division.