Sample of literary figures
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Barbara Havers
Female
Contrary to many other female police officers in crime fiction Barbara Havers is not a good-looking woman. Her creator, Elizabeth George, claims she made her deliberately unattractive and unkempt. Havers has cooperation issues and she is moody, stubborn and temperamental. Yet she has a functional working relationship with her complete opposite, the well bred, neatly turned out Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.
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Maureen O’Donnell
Female
She is the protagonist in the prize-winning Garnethill trilogy by the Scottish crime writer Denise Mina. Young Maureen is a human wreck: sexually abused by her father, her mother an alcoholic, her brother a drug dealer. She has spent time in a mental hospital, and started a relationship with her psychiatrist. But she is stubborn and determined, and struggles to solve the problems and crimes she comes across.
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Malcolm Fox
Male
He isn’t loved by his colleagues in the police force, because his job is to investigate occurrences of professional misconduct. Malcolm Fox is a well-built and divorced middle-aged man, who worries about his father’s delicate health and his alcoholic sister – he, himself, has been a teetotaller for a long time. He works in Edinburgh, where he cooperates with another of author Ian Rankins’ main characters: John Rebus.
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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.