Meny

Literary figures

Sample of literary figures

  • John Bright

    Male

    He is a detective inspector in Kentish Town just outside London, where he gets to experience everything from a decomposing female corpse in a bathtub to gang-shootings. John Bright is small of stature, dark, likes to wear a shoddy leather jacket, and (according to author Maureen O’Brien) looks more like a criminal than a police officer. He can be very irritable, doesn’t like travelling and has a patient girlfriend called Jude.

    Further reading

  • Lord Peter Wimsey

    Male

    The English aristocrat (he is the second son of a duke), bibliophile and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is one of the great men of crime fiction and principal character in a long line of classical stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. Witty and erudite, he solves crime with the help of logic, his butler, Bunter, and his friend (later brother-in-law) Inspector Charles Parker.

    Further reading

  • Gereon Rath

    Male

    A police detective and war veteran in Köln, who after a fatal mistake in his work in 1929 is transferred to Berlin. According to author Volker Kutscher, Gereon Rath is between 30 and 40 years old, slim, skilled, stubborn and a morphine addict on account of traumatic war experiences. In Berlin he meets police stenographer Charlotte ‘Charly’ Ritter; they start a relationship, get married and build a family.

    Further reading

  • Tony Hill

    Male

    Anthony ‘Tony’ Hill is a qualified psychologist as well as a skilful ‘profiler’ often used by the police in Bradford in a suite of crime novels by Val McDermid. He works with Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, and they have a complicated private relationship. Hill is sickly, sexually dysfunctional and there are details that mention an unhappy and mentally stressful childhood and youth.

    Further reading