Sample of literary figures
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Vera Stanhope
Female
An eccentric, middle-aged, controversial detective chief inspector in Northumberland and in a series of police novels by Ann Cleeves. Stanhope is a grim lone wolf and workaholic, in part because as a child she was subjected to sexual abuse by an acquaintance of her single father. She still lives in her childhood home, drives her father’s old Landrover and solves murder cases in her own very special way.
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Jimmy Perez
Male
Despite the surname, members of the Perez family have lived on the Shetland Islands for several hundred years – they are descendants of shipwrecked Spaniards. He is a police officer, and the main character in a number of police procedurals by Ann Cleeves. Perez starts a relationship with the single mother Fran Hunter in the first book, and suffers badly when he later loses her. He does, however, surface again and returns in several books.
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Martine Poirot
Female
An investigating judge in the fictive little Belgian town Villette-sur-Meuse, where she lives with her husband, the Swedish Professor Thomas Héger, a specialist in Medieval History, and (eventually) their two children. Martine Poirot – the author Ingrid Hedström is very fond of whodunnnits à la Agatha Christie – is 34 years old when we meet her for the first time. She is attractive and picks her clothes carefully as well as being a skilful and stubborn crime investigator.
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Thomas Carnacki
Male
English private detective who has certain similarities with Sherlock Holmes. Thomas Carnacki (his first name is rarely mentioned) doesn’t, however, only chase ordinary criminals, but also ghosts and other supernatural beings. He tells some friends about his cases while he keenly smokes his pipe. William Hope Hodgson only wrote nine short stories about Carnacki, but that sufficed to make the character classic.