Sample of literary figures
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Erlendur
Male
A detective inspector in Reykjavík, and the main character in a row of police novels by Arnaldur Indriðason. Erlendur – his surname, Sveinsson, is rarely named as is customary in Iceland – is a skilful and empathetic police officer, but rather tired and sometimes anxiety-ridden. One reason is that he left his family when the children were small, for reasons that he can’t himself remember. His ex-wife still hates him for this, and both his son and his daughter ended up abusing drugs.
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Gavin Troy
Male
Troy is a detective in the fictive English county of Midsomer, and Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby’s right hand. In Caroline Graham’s novel, Tory is a clever and intelligent police officer, but his prejudices – he is, for example, a homophobe – and rather abrupt manner speak against him. In the TV series <i>Midsomer Murders</i>, his personality has been ‘corrected’ and he is decidedly more sympathetic, and is still a skilled investigator.
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John H. Watson
Male
Sherlock Holmes’ chronicler and permanent companion in the stories by A. Conan Doyle has given his name to a particular type of character in crime fiction: a detective’s right hand, conversational partner and admiring friend is called ‘a Watson figure’. In books by other authors, Dr Watson has solved cases by himself. The ‘H’ in his name (according to Sherlockian research) stands for Hamish, the Scottish for James.
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Zack (Zackarias) Herry
Male
A tragic childhood turned 27-year-old ‘Zack’ Herry into a split personality. When he was six years old, his mother was murdered. Now, in the daytime, he is an ambitious police detective in Stockholm, but at night he lives a crazy life with drugs and booze in illegal clubs. He is described as handsome, with blond hair, in good physical condition and the main character in the Hercules series by Mons Kallentoft, Markus Lutteman and Anna Karolina.