Sample of literary figures
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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.
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Barbara Havers
Female
Contrary to many other female police officers in crime fiction Barbara Havers is not a good-looking woman. Her creator, Elizabeth George, claims she made her deliberately unattractive and unkempt. Havers has cooperation issues and she is moody, stubborn and temperamental. Yet she has a functional working relationship with her complete opposite, the well bred, neatly turned out Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.
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Evert Backstrom
Male
Backstrom is a homophobic, sexist, chauvinist, corrupt, egocentric, complacent, drinking police inspector that looks down on most of his colleagues and fellow human beings. At the same time he is a (to say the least) unconventional and surprisingly good investigator. He appears in more or less prominent roles in a string of police novels by Leif G.W. Persson.
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Inger Johanne Vik
Female
She is a criminal psychologist and lawyer who has worked for the American FBI, but who returned to Norway and Oslo where Detective Inspector Yngvar Stubø turns to her for help with a case. Which he gets – and Vik and Stubø get married too, and eventually have children as well in the novels that Anne Holt has written about the couple. Vik is also the main character in the Swedish TV series <i>Modus</i>.