Sample of literary figures
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Svend Foyn
Male
Lawyer and a skilled amateur detective who lives in the Norwegian town of Tønsberg, like his creator Jan Mehlum. Svend Foyn is divorced and has a teenaged daughter, loves music and books and easily becomes sentimental. His appearance is not particularly noticeable, but he is quite tall – more than 190 cm – and struggles to hold his weight under 90 kilos. His best female friend is Hulda – a Saint Bernhard dog.
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Victor Legris
Male
In the late 19th century, he runs a bookshop, Librairie Elzévir, in Paris together with his Japanese adoptive father Kenji Mori. In his free time, Victor Legris is an enthusiastic amateur detective and photographer. He is something of a clothes snob, is athletically built and has an appearance that interests women. Claude Izner (pseudonym for Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre) has written a suite of novels about him.
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Hanne Wilhelmsen
Female
Hanne Wilhemsen comes from a family of academics, and her father is a professor. She surprises and annoys her family by becoming a police officer. Wilhelmsen is a lesbian, she is good looking and she rides a pink Harley Davidson until she is shot and ends up in a wheelchair. Anne Holt has written a string of internationally acclaimed novels about Wilhelmsen’s professional and private life.
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Vera Stanhope
Female
An eccentric, middle-aged, controversial detective chief inspector in Northumberland and in a series of police novels by Ann Cleeves. Stanhope is a grim lone wolf and workaholic, in part because as a child she was subjected to sexual abuse by an acquaintance of her single father. She still lives in her childhood home, drives her father’s old Landrover and solves murder cases in her own very special way.