Sample of literary figures
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Petra Connor
Female
She is beautiful, slim, with black hair and black eyes – and is a tough and good murder investigator. Connor is employed by the Los Angeles homicide squad, and she cooperates with author Jonathan Kellerman’s main character Alex Delaware in several of his cases. She is herself also the main character in two novels. But she has a background she doesn’t like to talk about, and her private life is pretty messy, to put it mildly.
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C.W. Sughrue
Male
C.W. stands for Chauncey Wayne, but not many people know that. He is a private detective in Meriweather i Montana – where also author James Crumley’s other private detective, Milo Milodragovitch, is found. C.W. is a shabby war veteran and drug-abuser, always ready to resort to violence and he admits himself that he is “a mean son of a bitch”. He solves cases in his own way, is heavy-handed but effective.
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Thursday Next
Female
She is called Thursday Next, and is an agent for a state organisation in an absurd, parallel world (i.e. parallel to our own) that is imbued with literary features. She is newly married – we get to know that her husband Landen Parke-Laine drowned when he was three years old – and has a son Friday. Her mother is called Wednesday. Jasper Fforde has written a suite of very different fantasy crime novels about Thursday Next and her world.
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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.