Sample of literary figures
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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.
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Jules-Joseph Maigret
Male
French detective inspector and something of an icon within the genre. Maigret was a farmer’s boy who became a cop by chance and quickly earned himself an office at the Paris police headquarters at Quai des Orfèvres. Georges Simenon’s books do not only follow the inspector’s investigations, but also his private life, including a happy, but childless, marriage.
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Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg
Male
Adamsberg is a Paris detective inspector. His pace is slow, he is contemplative, he is well acquainted with the human character, he relies on his intuition, and he solves every case he is confronted with. These are generally full of mysteries, but Adamsberg’s unorthodox methods and competent colleagues are a great help to him. Adamsberg is the creation of Fred Vargas, pseudonym for the French author Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau.
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Arto Söderstedt
Male
A Finland-Swedish top lawyer who tired of his job and moved with his family to Sweden where he trained to become a police officer. After a spell in Västerås, Arto Söderstedt was transferred to the Swedish Police Board’s special A-group unit, which Arne Dahl (pseudonym for Jan Arnald) has written about. After the group was split up, he returned in Dahl’s books about the international police force OPCOP.