Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Maisie Dobbs

    Female

    Young, brave and intelligent private detective who started to work as a domestic when she was only 13 years old. Maisie Dobbs had a benevolent female employer, and got to study nursing and psychology. She fell in love with a doctor who was killed in the First World War, and in 1929 she started her own detective agency. Jacqueline Winspear has written more than a dozen books about her.

    Further reading

  • Camille Verhœven

    Male

    Author Pierre Lemaitre doesn’t make life easy for his middle-aged detective chief inspector, Camille Verhœven, in Paris. His pregnant wife is tortured to death in the first book: in the fourth book, his girlfriend Anne Forestier is almost killed in connection with a robbery. The short and entirely bald police officer, who isn’t always particularly sympathetic, solves the cases; then he resigns.

    Further reading

  • John Cardinal

    Male

    He has a good name as a police officer and family father when his wife is found dead after what is presumed to be suicide. Besides, Detective Cardinal is, without knowing it himself, suspected of having taken bribes. His name is cleared and he starts to work with cold cases in the fictive town of Algonquin Bay in Ontario in Canada together with his younger colleague Lise Delorme in a suite of crime novels by Giles Blunt.

    Further reading

  • C.W. Sughrue

    Male

    C.W. stands for Chauncey Wayne, but not many people know that. He is a private detective in Meriweather i Montana – where also author James Crumley’s other private detective, Milo Milodragovitch, is found. C.W. is a shabby war veteran and drug-abuser, always ready to resort to violence and he admits himself that he is “a mean son of a bitch”. He solves cases in his own way, is heavy-handed but effective.

    Further reading