Sample of literary figures
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Erast Fandorin
Male
A Russian police officer, secret agent and spy in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Erast Petrovich Fandorin never knew his mother, and when his bankrupt father died when Erast was 19 years old, he is forced to break off his studies and start working in the police force. His brilliant career is described in a row of books by Boris Akunin (pseudonym for Grigory Chkhartishvili).
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Peter Diamond
Male
Peter Diamond is a police officer, formerly stationed in London, and now working in Bath in Somerset. He is 50+, a widower and overweight with abominable dietary habits – ‘an ambulatory heart attack’, according to his creator Peter Lovesey. Already in the early books, Diamond left the police service, but returned after a couple of novels. Through his stubbornness and the way he ignores orders, he solves a number of sensitive cases.
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Patrick Kenzie
Male
Patrick Kenzie is a private detective from Boston. He works with his childhood friend Angela ”Angie” Gennaro. He is tough and quick-witted, he has a black sense of humour and a weak spot for his married partner, which makes their relationship complicated. Dennis Lehane has written a string of much acclaimed hardboiled, urban, violent police novels about the pair.
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Jules-Joseph Maigret
Male
French detective inspector and something of an icon within the genre. Maigret was a farmer’s boy who became a cop by chance and quickly earned himself an office at the Paris police headquarters at Quai des Orfèvres. Georges Simenon’s books do not only follow the inspector’s investigations, but also his private life, including a happy, but childless, marriage.