Sample of literary figures
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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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Rebecka Martinsson
Female
Beautiful and well-educated lawyer – who first works in a law firm and later becomes a public prosecutor – who has a central role in all of Åsa Larsson’s crime stories. In the first books, Rebecka Martinsson is living in Stockholm, but her work takes her to Kiruna, where she grew up, and she later moves back there. She has quite a lot of problems at work as well as in her private life, but is supported by friends, including the police officer Anna-Maria Mella.
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Tiny (Thobela) Mpayipheli
Male
South African warrior from the Xhosa tribe, renowned freedom-fighter – former ANC soldier – but also a Stasi agent and assassin for the KGB. He is the son of a peaceful pastor, and according to author Deon Meyer is a giant of a man with very dark skin and dazzlingly white teeth. Thobela ‘Tiny’ Mpayipheli is a skilled rugby player and for a while lives together with Miriam Nzululwazi, whose death hits him hard.
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Gerlof Davidson
Male
He is a former sea captain, now more than 80 years old, and in need of a walking stick as well as a hearing aid in his daily life. But there is nothing wrong with his memory and deductive reasoning. Old Gerlof – loosely based on author Johan Theorin’s grandfather Ellert Gerlofsson – is the main character, if not always the real problem-solver, in four lauded detective stories set in an Öland island environment with suggested supernatural elements.