Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • John Cardinal

    Male

    He has a good name as a police officer and family father when his wife is found dead after what is presumed to be suicide. Besides, Detective Cardinal is, without knowing it himself, suspected of having taken bribes. His name is cleared and he starts to work with cold cases in the fictive town of Algonquin Bay in Ontario in Canada together with his younger colleague Lise Delorme in a suite of crime novels by Giles Blunt.

    Further reading

  • Hanne Wilhelmsen

    Female

    Hanne Wilhemsen comes from a family of academics, and her father is a professor. She surprises and annoys her family by becoming a police officer. Wilhelmsen is a lesbian, she is good looking and she rides a pink Harley Davidson until she is shot and ends up in a wheelchair. Anne Holt has written a string of internationally acclaimed novels about Wilhelmsen’s professional and private life.

    Further reading

  • Barbara Havers

    Female

    Contrary to many other female police officers in crime fiction Barbara Havers is not a good-looking woman. Her creator, Elizabeth George, claims she made her deliberately unattractive and unkempt. Havers has cooperation issues and she is moody, stubborn and temperamental. Yet she has a functional working relationship with her complete opposite, the well bred, neatly turned out Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.

    Further reading

  • Gunnarstranda

    Male

    Detective Inspector Gunnarstranda – his first name is never mentioned – is a middle-aged man who smokes too much. He works for the Oslo police and solves crime in a string of books by the Norwegian author Kjell Ola Dahl. Gunnarstranda can be cynical and disillusioned, but he is also kind and helpful. He general works alongside his seargeant, Frank Frølich.

    Further reading