What would Christopher Foyle do?

I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says, “What would Atticus do?”—a tribute to Atticus Finch, the saintly lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Having finished watching (via Netflix) six seasons of the BBC TV series Foyle’s War, I’m ready to slap on a  “What would Christopher Foyle do?” sticker.

In Foyle’s War, the marvelous Michael Kitchen plays a taciturn, principled police commissioner on the south coast of England during World War II. Foyle knows that hauling in local crooks is small potatoes in the midst of a world war, but he never cuts corners. When asked to alter the pursuit of justice to suit a political or military goal, he politely refuses, invariably asking, “Isn’t that the kind of thing we are fighting this war to defeat?”