Sample of literary figures
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Varg Veum
Male
With his books about the private detective Varg Veum, author Gunnar Staalesen transferred American hardboiled noir to a Scandinavian setting – Bergen in Norway. Veum is one of the best-known fictional characters in Norway; he features in several television productions as well as a comic strip. He operates in widely different social settings and is prone to commenting on current affairs.
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Vincent Ruiz
Male
The colour of his face shows that he drinks too much. Otherwise he is big and strong – not least as regards language – with a broken nose. Vincent Ruiz has a history of 43 years as a police officer in London, three marriages and just as many divorces. He does, however, have good contact with his ex-wives as well as his children. And even though he is now retired, he still catches villains in Michael Robotham’s novels.
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Irene Huss
Female
Inspector Irene Huss lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is married to a chef and she is the mother of twins, two teenage girls that now and then annoy their parents by taking an interest in neo-Nazism or vegan food. Huss is struggling to get ahead in a male-dominated profession. Her creator, Helen Tursten, has made her a European ju-jitsu champion, which occasionally comes in useful.
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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!