Sample of literary figures
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Dudley Smith
Male
Police officer in Los Angeles in four of James Ellroy’s novels. Dudley Smith was born in Ireland, he is tall and broad shouldered, and goes all in brown, one could say: he has brown hair cut very short, brown eyes and he usually wears a shabby, brown suit. Few police officers in crime fiction have been described as so unsympathetic: he is an egoistic and violent bully and, it turns out, a murderer. And he is happy with that!
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Hercule Poirot
Male
The Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot worked for the Belgian police until Agatha Christie transferred him to England. Poirot is characterised by his vanity, his strong French accent, his egg-shaped head and his impressive moustache, and he solves crime in a string of classic whodunits. Poirot eventually became so famous that <i>The Times</i> published an obituary when Christie killed him off in one of her books.
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Harry Friberg
Male
Stieg Trenter based his protagonist Friberg on his friend, the photographer K. W. Gullers. Friberg too is a well-known photographer. He is a cheerful, alert man who loves good food and the company of women. It is not he, however, who solves crime, that is the job of Detective Inspector Vesper Johnson. When Trenter died, his wife Ulla continued the series, allowing Friberg to get married.
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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.