Sample of literary figures
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Tommy Beresford
Male
The red-headed Thomas ‘Tommy’ Beresford is something of an unimaginative but stubborn Englishman, who took part in the First World War and was wounded twice. He subsequently married his childhood friend Prudence ‘Tuppence’ Cowley, and they have two children and adopt a third. Together, the couple solve a number of cases with good humour and entertaining dialogues in four novels and a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie.
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Jackson Lamb
Male
Misanthropic boss of Slough House, a department for discharged spies and agents in the British MI5. Jackson Lamb, a central figure in a suite of novels by Mick Herron, is a former spy who has gone to seed. He is tall, has an ‘offensive’ face, is cynical and sarcastic, a chain smoker and is careless about his personal hygiene. This doesn’t prevent him and his department from managing to solve several sensitive spy cases.
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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.
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Evert Backstrom
Male
Backstrom is a homophobic, sexist, chauvinist, corrupt, egocentric, complacent, drinking police inspector that looks down on most of his colleagues and fellow human beings. At the same time he is a (to say the least) unconventional and surprisingly good investigator. He appears in more or less prominent roles in a string of police novels by Leif G.W. Persson.