Sample of literary figures
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Tony Hill
Male
Anthony ‘Tony’ Hill is a qualified psychologist as well as a skilful ‘profiler’ often used by the police in Bradford in a suite of crime novels by Val McDermid. He works with Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, and they have a complicated private relationship. Hill is sickly, sexually dysfunctional and there are details that mention an unhappy and mentally stressful childhood and youth.
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Cordelia Gray
Female
A young private detective in only two novels by P.D. James; many readers have complained that there weren’t any more. She grew up with her foster parents – her mother died an hour after the birth of her daughter – and as an adult became the secretary to the private detective Bernie G. Pryde. When he died of cancer, Cordelia Gray inherited his agency. She is attractive, but despite her successes she is – deep inside – unsure of herself.
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Gavin Troy
Male
Troy is a detective in the fictive English county of Midsomer, and Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby’s right hand. In Caroline Graham’s novel, Tory is a clever and intelligent police officer, but his prejudices – he is, for example, a homophobe – and rather abrupt manner speak against him. In the TV series <i>Midsomer Murders</i>, his personality has been ‘corrected’ and he is decidedly more sympathetic, and is still a skilled investigator.
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Kristina Vendel
Female
Female detective inspector with the police in Huddinge, Stockholm. Her father had fled from East Germany to Sweden; Kristina Vendel’s marriage to Johan is in trouble and eventually breaks up. She has light hair, grey-green eyes, and studied Philosophy before she started at Police College. She has a tough time at work, and is often abused in several ways, Theodor Kallifatides tells us.