Sample of literary figures
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Arto Söderstedt
Male
A Finland-Swedish top lawyer who tired of his job and moved with his family to Sweden where he trained to become a police officer. After a spell in Västerås, Arto Söderstedt was transferred to the Swedish Police Board’s special A-group unit, which Arne Dahl (pseudonym for Jan Arnald) has written about. After the group was split up, he returned in Dahl’s books about the international police force OPCOP.
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Michael McLoughlin
Male
An older, somewhat overweight police officer in Dublin, who after his retirement has bought a house in a bathing resort outside the town. He is single – but not uninterested in women – and his immediate family is small: his mother, who lives in an old people’s home, and a sister. His father, who was also a police officer, was killed on duty. As a pensioner, Michael McLoughlin is reluctantly involved in some crime cases in novels by Julie Parsons.
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John Dortmunder
Male
He is one of the most cunning thieves in the USA: he carefully plans the most fantastic coups, and has only been caught twice when he was young. Unfortunately, John Archibald Dortmunder is dogged with bad luck: his ingenious plans often go wrong at the last moment for the most incredible reasons. His adventures are described in more than a dozen entertaining – often farcical – novels by Donald E. Westlake.
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Martin Beck
Male
Few Swedes can have escaped Inspector Martin Beck of the Stockholm police department. A principal character in Maj Sjöwall’s and Per Wahlöö’s ten police novels, he is the typical meticulous, unhappily married, ulcer-suffering inspector in contemporary crime fiction. He has won international fame through the books and a string of adaptations for film and television.