Sample of literary figures
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Fran Hunter
Female
Single mother, artist and teacher who settles on the Shetland Islands so that her daughter Cassie can get to know her father, Fran’s former husband, who is from the islands. However, Fran finds herself in a murder mystery and meets police officer Jimmy Perez with whom she starts a relationship. The books about Hunter and Perez gave author Ann Cleeves her breakthrough – despite the tragic end to the love story.
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Tom Ripley
Male
He is charming, handsome and cultivated as well as being a ruthless serial killer and psychopath totally lacking in empathy, the main character in five classic thrillers by Patricia Highsmith. Thomas ‘Tom’ Ripley became an orphan when he was five years old, and was brought up by a callous female relative. He later marries the wealthy Héloïse Plisson, but nevertheless has successfully continued his criminal career.
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Kristina Vendel
Female
Female detective inspector with the police in Huddinge, Stockholm. Her father had fled from East Germany to Sweden; Kristina Vendel’s marriage to Johan is in trouble and eventually breaks up. She has light hair, grey-green eyes, and studied Philosophy before she started at Police College. She has a tough time at work, and is often abused in several ways, Theodor Kallifatides tells us.
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Jackson Brodie
Male
He is a middle-aged divorced detective, former soldier and police officer, born in Yorkshire but living in London despite the fact that he has never liked southern England. So he is happy to travel north, and some of Kate Atkinson’s novels about him are set in Scotland. Jackson Brodie’s strength as a detective does not lie in logical reasoning, but in his empathy with the afflicted: the victims of crime and their loved ones.