Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Gordianus

    Female

    He is called Gordianus the Finder, and is a private investigator in ancient Rome in the days of Julius Caesar. ‘Lawyers’ and orators like Cicero are some of the people who use his services in historical crime novels by Steven Saylor. Gordianus’ wife is the Egyptian Bethesda, previously his concubine whom he had bought as a slave. He lives in Rome until he inherits a farm in Etruria, but later moves back to the city.

    Further reading

  • Sidney Chambers

    Male

    James Runcie has written a suite of novels about Sidney Chambers, vicar in Grantchester near Cambridge, and describes that character’s activities as an Anglican priest and amateur detective. The good vicar is tall, slim, just over 30 years of age with a high forehead, a hook nose and brown eyes. He is married to the German widow Hildegarde Staunton, and they have a daughter called Anna. Detective Inspector Geordie Keating is a very good friend.

    Further reading

  • Milo Sturgis

    Male

    Sturgis is a well-built, rather plump detective with the Los Angeles Police. And he is openly homosexual too – which causes him some problems – and co-habits with Richard ‘Rick’ Silverman, a doctor and orthodox Jew. Sturgis has an M.A. in Literature, loves fruit and is a secondary character in Jonathan Kellerman’s books about psychologist Alex Delaware. He does, however, have the main role in some of them.

    Further reading

  • 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.

    Further reading