Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Anna Holt

    Female

    Anna Holt is a police officer, later commissioner of police, in Stockholm. She is the creation of authors Jan Guillou and Leif G.W. Persson who wrote the screenplay for a series of television episodes about her in the 1990s. Over the years, she has featured in some of the novels each has written independently. Holt is a complex woman, a determined and inventive investigator and a skilled interrogator.

    Further reading

  • Thursday Next

    Female

    She is called Thursday Next, and is an agent for a state organisation in an absurd, parallel world (i.e. parallel to our own) that is imbued with literary features. She is newly married – we get to know that her husband Landen Parke-Laine drowned when he was three years old – and has a son Friday. Her mother is called Wednesday. Jasper Fforde has written a suite of very different fantasy crime novels about Thursday Next and her world.

    Further reading

  • Faye Adelheim

    Female

    Sexy, blond and successful businesswoman, who since her teens has taken revenge on nasty and dishonest male persons, including by killing them, in books by Camilla Läckberg. Faye Adelheim’s real first name is Matilda, and she has a tragic background which includes an extremely brutal father and dishonest ex-husband, Jack, whom she got condemned for the murder of their child, Julienne – who is still alive.

    Further reading

  • Annika Bengtzon

    Female

    Annika Bengtzon is the creation of the Swedish author and journalist Liza Marklund and possibly Sweden’s best-known journalist. She is married with two children, but she is also a highly competent crime reporter with a bad conscience on account of neglecting her family. Bengtzon is a complex woman who can be hard and tough one minute and reduced to tears the next. Nevertheless, she is portrayed as a highly capable modern professional woman.

    Further reading