Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • 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

  • Sean Duffy

    Male

    A young – he was born in 1950 – police detective posted in Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. The IRA struggles are at their worst, and Sean Patrick Duffy doesn’t have an easy time as a Catholic in the Protestant Northern Ireland, according to author Adrian McKinty. Duffy has dark, curly hair and blue eyes, is temporarily single, likes listening to classical music and has hidden a bit of hashish in his garage.

    Further reading

  • Paul Hjelm

    Male

    Police officer in Huddinge, Stockholm, who was wrongly suspended and then transferred to the Swedish Police Board’s special A-group unit where he became a central figure. When the group is split up, Paul Hjelm and some of the others are transferred to an international force OPCOP. He is married to Cilla and the couple have two children. The books about him are written by Arne Dahl (pseudonym for Jan Arnald).

    Further reading

  • Karen Pirie

    Female

    She is an overweight workaholic, but also exceptionally skilful when it comes to investigating old, unsolved cases in police novels by Val McDermid. Karen Pirie is the head of the Historic Cases Unit with its head office in Fife in Scotland. Her private life is minimal – but includes a sweetheart, her colleague Phil Parhatka, and she mourns deeply when he is killed on duty. But she soon throws herself into the next ‘cold case’.

    Further reading