Sample of literary figures
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Anna Holt
Female
Anna Holt is a police officer, later commissioner of police, in Stockholm. She is the creation of authors Jan Guillou and Leif G.W. Persson who wrote the screenplay for a series of television episodes about her in the 1990s. Over the years, she has featured in some of the novels each has written independently. Holt is a complex woman, a determined and inventive investigator and a skilled interrogator.
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Charlie Chan
Male
Charlie Chan is a Chinese police inspector who works in Honolulu where he lives with his large family. The friendly, polite and calm Chan solves tricky cases in six whodunits by the American author Earl Derr Biggers. Chan is also the protagonist in a couple of dozen films that together with the books have made him a classic character.
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Gunvald Larsson
Male
Born in the fancy district of Östermalm, Stockholm, in a military family that he despises, he is a Marxist, a snobby dresser, sarcastic and is quick to resort to violence. He is single, almost two metres tall, strong as a bull, has closely set eyes and has the habit of picking between his teeth with a paper knife. Apart from this, Gunvald Larsson is an important member in the police group around Martin Beck in most of the books by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö.
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Vera Stanhope
Female
An eccentric, middle-aged, controversial detective chief inspector in Northumberland and in a series of police novels by Ann Cleeves. Stanhope is a grim lone wolf and workaholic, in part because as a child she was subjected to sexual abuse by an acquaintance of her single father. She still lives in her childhood home, drives her father’s old Landrover and solves murder cases in her own very special way.