Sample of literary figures
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Kristina Vendel
Female
Female detective inspector with the police in Huddinge, Stockholm. Her father had fled from East Germany to Sweden; Kristina Vendel’s marriage to Johan is in trouble and eventually breaks up. She has light hair, grey-green eyes, and studied Philosophy before she started at Police College. She has a tough time at work, and is often abused in several ways, Theodor Kallifatides tells us.
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Knut Gribb
Male
Scandinavia’s busiest detective: he has solved cases in more than 1,500 stories! He was created by Stein Riverton (pseudonym for Sven Elvestad), but was taken over by a large number of other authors. Even Swedes, which is why the police officer from Oslo has also worked in Sweden. Riverton’s Knut Gribb stories were later published with the main character changed to Asbjørn Krag, which is why the two are like each other.
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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.
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Richard Hannay
Male
He was born in Scotland, learnt German from his father’s business friends, but grew up in South Africa. He was a soldier in the Boer War, but moved back to England in 1914, and was drawn into the first of the adventures that John Buchan wrote about him. Richard Hanney was a spy in the First World War, but subsequently married Mary Lamington, had a son called Peter John, and became a farmer.