Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Rebecka Martinsson

    Female

    Beautiful and well-educated lawyer – who first works in a law firm and later becomes a public prosecutor – who has a central role in all of Åsa Larsson’s crime stories. In the first books, Rebecka Martinsson is living in Stockholm, but her work takes her to Kiruna, where she grew up, and she later moves back there. She has quite a lot of problems at work as well as in her private life, but is supported by friends, including the police officer Anna-Maria Mella.

    Further reading

  • Harriet Vane

    Female

    At the age of 29, crime writer Harriet Vane stands trial accused of having poisoned her lover. She is shown to be innocent by Lord Peter Wimsey, who falls in love with her and then in some of Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels courts the independent Vane. She participates in his investigations, but is not interested in a more intimate relationship with him. Eventually, however, she gives in, they get married and have three sons.

    Further reading

  • Çetin Ìkmen

    Male

    He is a self-willed detective in the police force of his birth city Istanbul, which he loves with all his heart. But he is well aware of the city’s less savoury sides, and the memory of crimes he has investigated has meant that he chain-smokes and also drinks too much – which greatly upsets his Muslim wife Fatma. Together the couple have a lot of children and the number steadily grows in Barbara Nadel’s books about him.

    Further reading

  • Kouplan

    Male

    He calls himself Kouplan, but his real name is Nesrine Amipour, born in 1968, and he is a transsexual guy in a woman’s body. He has trained as a journalist, but is now a refugee without papers in Sweden, homeless and unemployed. He supports himself by collecting drink-cans (and thus being able to cash in on the deposit) and works as a ‘private investigator’ in four novels by Sara Lövestam, while at the same time trying to ascertain what has happened to his Iranian family.

    Further reading