Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Archie Goodwin

    Male

    The voluminous private detective Nero Wolfe, created by Rex Stout, rarely leaves home. He lets his secretary, Archie Goodwin, do the legwork, and Goodwin is not a bad detective either. He is good looking, polite, tough when he needs to be, quick-witted and he can memorize interrogations word for word. He is usually the narrator in the Nero Wolfe books. His employer would never have been able to solve crime as elegantly as he does without him.

    Further reading

  • Hercule Poirot

    Male

    The Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot worked for the Belgian police until Agatha Christie transferred him to England. Poirot is characterised by his vanity, his strong French accent, his egg-shaped head and his impressive moustache, and he solves crime in a string of classic whodunits. Poirot eventually became so famous that <i>The Times</i> published an obituary when Christie killed him off in one of her books.

    Further reading

  • Anastasia Kamenskaya

    Female

    The young, later middle-aged, Anastasia Kamenskaya is an analyst and investigator for the Moscow Police Department. She is linguistically gifted and beautiful, but is careless about her appearance and how she dresses. Her kind live-in partner (later her husband) looks after their home and accepts that she is often too tired for sex. She is also the main character in a long suite of novels by Alexandra Marinina (pseudonym for Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva).

    Further reading

  • Sean Dillon

    Male

    An IRA soldier, born 1952, who later changes sides and is a British agent in a long row of novels by Jack Higgins (pseudonym for Henry Patterson). As a young man, short, blond Sean Dillon has a brief acting career, and is an expert on disguise. He is also a skilled pilot and diver, as well as an expert marksman and linguist. As a British agent, he got Liam Devlin, another of Higgins’ heroes, as his mentor.

    Further reading