Sample of literary figures
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Beate Stein
Female
A young police detective in Dortmund, blond and with green eyes, and tough enough (or more than so) to survive and thrive in a male-dominated workplace. Beate Stein is a heterosexual feminist who prefers to put men behind bars rather than women, but she never cheats in her work. Through the books by Sabine Deitmer, she has become something of a figurehead for what is known as <i>Frauen-Krimis</i>.
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Hafez el-Assad
Male
He is simply called Assad by his colleagues in the crime novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. Despite lacking formal qualifications, he is employed in the police department’s so-called ‘cold-case’ group. He generously shares of his knowledge of, for example, various types of weapons, but is not keen to talk about himself. Assad has his roots in an Arab country, probably Syria, and has certain difficulties with the Danish language.
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John Bright
Male
He is a detective inspector in Kentish Town just outside London, where he gets to experience everything from a decomposing female corpse in a bathtub to gang-shootings. John Bright is small of stature, dark, likes to wear a shoddy leather jacket, and (according to author Maureen O’Brien) looks more like a criminal than a police officer. He can be very irritable, doesn’t like travelling and has a patient girlfriend called Jude.
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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.