Sample of literary figures
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Eva Ström
Female
An energetic young detective inspector, born in Vietnam and adopted in Sweden. Eva Ström had a difficult childhood, but trained to become a police officer, and started to work in Ystad. She is later transferred to Malmö. She works in tandem with Jonny Lilja in the books by Olle Lönnaeus. She lifts weights at the gym, has a compact body, a wide face with slanting eyes, and lives together with her girlfriend Britt in a house in the countryside.
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Karen Pirie
Female
She is an overweight workaholic, but also exceptionally skilful when it comes to investigating old, unsolved cases in police novels by Val McDermid. Karen Pirie is the head of the Historic Cases Unit with its head office in Fife in Scotland. Her private life is minimal – but includes a sweetheart, her colleague Phil Parhatka, and she mourns deeply when he is killed on duty. But she soon throws herself into the next ‘cold case’.
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Harry Friberg
Male
Stieg Trenter based his protagonist Friberg on his friend, the photographer K. W. Gullers. Friberg too is a well-known photographer. He is a cheerful, alert man who loves good food and the company of women. It is not he, however, who solves crime, that is the job of Detective Inspector Vesper Johnson. When Trenter died, his wife Ulla continued the series, allowing Friberg to get married.
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Jackson Lamb
Male
Misanthropic boss of Slough House, a department for discharged spies and agents in the British MI5. Jackson Lamb, a central figure in a suite of novels by Mick Herron, is a former spy who has gone to seed. He is tall, has an ‘offensive’ face, is cynical and sarcastic, a chain smoker and is careless about his personal hygiene. This doesn’t prevent him and his department from managing to solve several sensitive spy cases.