A holodeck character in the Dixon Hill programme, a hard-nosed San Francisco police lieutenant who questions Picard over the murder of Jessica Bradley in The Big Goodbye.
Lieutenant Dan Bell is a fictional policeman in the Dixon Hill stories, recreated on the Enterprise-D holodeck in the first-season episode The Big Goodbye. He works alongside the friendlier Lieutenant McNary in 1941 San Francisco.
When Picard, playing Hill, returns to the programme, he is hauled in to the station because his client Jessica Bradley has been found murdered. Bell conducts the interrogation in the grudging, suspicious manner of the genre, while Picard thoroughly enjoys the experience.
Bell lets him go for lack of evidence. He is one of the period characters through whom the episode pays tribute to hard-boiled detective fiction.