Sample of literary figures
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Jack Reacher
Male
He is a former officer in the US Army military police, but after being discharged he lives as a vagabond who – usually in a violent manner – solves criminal cases and other problems in books by Lee Child. The well-built Reacher’s parents and only brother are dead, and he steers clear of permanent relationships. He sometimes suffers from claustrophobia and likes to listen to music that he can memorise in an unusual way.
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Judy Hammer
Female
Superintendent Judy Hammer is head of a police department in North Carolina, Virginia, where she has to deal with both city crime and stubborn islanders in a short suite of novels by Patricia Cornwell. Hammer is a middle-aged, unhappily married but very fond of her young colleague Andy Brazil, who becomes her right hand. In the books about them, realistic police work is combined with some less realistic elements.
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Dave Gurney
Male
A well-built police detective in New York who commands respect, renowned for having caught several serial murderers, who retires already when he is about 50 years old. He moves to the countryside with his wife Madeleine and their son, but can’t resist from privately investigating murders. He admits that this affects his family life, and thus always has a bad conscience, according to his creator John Verdon.
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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.