Sample of literary figures
-
Jimmy Perez
Male
Despite the surname, members of the Perez family have lived on the Shetland Islands for several hundred years – they are descendants of shipwrecked Spaniards. He is a police officer, and the main character in a number of police procedurals by Ann Cleeves. Perez starts a relationship with the single mother Fran Hunter in the first book, and suffers badly when he later loses her. He does, however, surface again and returns in several books.
-
Guido Brunetti
Male
Commissario (Detective Superintendent) Brunetti in the Italian state police, stationed in Venice, solves murder cases in a number of books by American author Donna Leon, herself resident in the city. Brunetti is married to Paola, daughter in an aristocratic family and a university lecturer, and has a lively family life which includes children and his own as well as his wife’s relatives. He also battles against the Italian bureaucracy which doesn’t exactly facilitate his work.
-
Steve Carella
Male
A central figure in Ed McBain’s (pseudonym for Evan Hunter) books about the 87th police district in Isola is Stephen ‘Steve’ Carella. He is of Italian extraction, and in one of the early books he marries the beautiful and deaf-mute Theodora ‘Teddy’ Franklin, with whom he has twin sons. Detective Carella is tall, dark and muscular without being athletic; he gives an impression of strength and energy.
-
John Madden
Male
Scotland Yard detective John Madden suffered from an explosion during the First World War, but nevertheless in 1921 still solves the murder of four persons in the Surrey countryside. After that, he and his wife, Dr Helen Blackwell, settle as farmers in Surrey, but for various reasons Madden nevertheless takes part in investigations of several brutal murders in England during the Thirties and Forties in a suite of novels by Rennie Airth.