Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Annika Bengtzon

    Female

    Annika Bengtzon is the creation of the Swedish author and journalist Liza Marklund and possibly Sweden’s best-known journalist. She is married with two children, but she is also a highly competent crime reporter with a bad conscience on account of neglecting her family. Bengtzon is a complex woman who can be hard and tough one minute and reduced to tears the next. Nevertheless, she is portrayed as a highly capable modern professional woman.

    Further reading

  • Francis Hancock

    Male

    His father was an Englishman, his mother from India. Francis Hancock himself is a funeral director in London during the Second World War, when the Germans bombed the city. His experiences during the First World War, when he was a soldier, have given him mental problems. He is very withdrawn, which doesn’t, however, prevent him from being a clever – albeit reluctant – amateur detective in a suite of books by Barbara Nadel.

    Further reading

  • Alex Recht

    Male

    In the Stockholm C.I.D., Detective Chief Inspector Alex Recht is something of a legend. With more than 30 years’ service and a large number of hard-to-solve cases behind him, he starts – even though he loves his job – to look forward to retirement and to being able to spend more time with his wife, Lena, with whom he has been married almost as long as he has been a police officer. In the books by Kristina Ohlsson he usually works together with Fredrika Bergman.

    Further reading

  • Conny Sjöberg

    Male

    As an experienced detective chief inspector with Hammarby Police in Stockholm, he leads a well-coordinated team of murder investigators who, for example, deal with cases where children have been hurt. Conny Sjöberg is a middle-aged, unusually ordinary man, happily married to Åsa; they have five children. He is described as handsome, empathetic, sensitive and honest. According to author Carin Gerhardsen, he is partly modelled on her husband Ken.

    Further reading