Sample of literary figures
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Nikki Liska
Female
Female police officer in Minneapolis, divorced with two teenaged sons, and together with colleague Sam Kovac the main character in a suite of crime novels by Tami Hoag. Nikki Liska has a sharp tongue, is tough and has quite a sense of humour. She gets on well with the older Kovac, and they miss each other – so they continue to cooperate – when she is moved to a cold-case group to be able to have more time with her sons.
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Carl Hamilton
Male
The Swedish secret agent Carl Hamilton, code name Coq Rouge, was born in 1954 to an aristocratic family and later became a leftist activist. He trained as an attack diver and after being trained by the CIA he worked for the military intelligence organization OP5 and was later appointed director general of the Swedish Security Services. Hamilton is the protagonist in about a dozen bestselling thrillers by Jan Guillou.
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Alex Morrow
Female
Morrow is a working class detective from Glasgow. She is the mother of twins and the protagonist in a series of tartan noir books by Denise Mina. Morrow is not always very forthcoming or correct, but she struggles to combine her job with being a mother and against misogynous bosses and colleagues in a city characterised by increasing class differences and violent crime.
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Terry Quinn
Male
When he worked as a police officer, he accidentally killed a colleague. As a result, the green-eyed Irishman Terry Quinn left the police force and instead got a job in a shop in Silver Spring, Maryland, which sells second-hand paperbacks and vinyl records. However, he also does some extra work as an active assistant to another former policeman, Derek Strange, who is now a private detective, in books by George P. Pelecanos.