Sample of literary figures
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Vesper Johnson
Male
Detective Inspector Vesper Johnson is a unique, and very entertaining, character. He is vain with a “beaver” face and rakish moustache; he wears high heels and dyes his hair. Johnson solves crime in a string of novels by Stieg Trenter in which the protagonist is the photographer Harry Friberg. After Trenter’s death, his wife Ulla continued to write her own books about Friberg and Johnson.
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Harry Kvist
Male
An odd character and an amateur detective: an ex-boxer and prison inmate who works as a debt-collector, is bi-sexual and drinks too much. The setting is Stockholm in the 1930s in a trio of novels by Martin Holmén. Harry Kvist is single, with few friends (but a lot of acquaintances), not particularly bright, but well-built, and he all too often uses his fists when trouble arises.
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Lisa Mattei
Female
In 2005, Leif G.W. Persson wrote about the young detective inspector Lisa Mattei; ten years later, she is a middle-aged operations manager for the Swedish security services. She made a rapid career, but has a bad conscience because she rarely has time to be with her family, her husband Johan and her daughter Ella. She has private means, and is something of a connoisseur when it comes to clothes, for example. But she is also a gifted and skilful police officer.
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Michael McLoughlin
Male
An older, somewhat overweight police officer in Dublin, who after his retirement has bought a house in a bathing resort outside the town. He is single – but not uninterested in women – and his immediate family is small: his mother, who lives in an old people’s home, and a sister. His father, who was also a police officer, was killed on duty. As a pensioner, Michael McLoughlin is reluctantly involved in some crime cases in novels by Julie Parsons.