Sample of literary figures
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Flavia de Luce
Female
In the 1950s, the motherless Flavia de Luce was not highly regarded by her father and sisters. She was indeed a rather ordinary and everyday 11-12-year-old (with dental braces), but mature for her age, and determined too, with a mind of her own and smart, and she busied herself with nasty-smelling chemistry experiments. Besides, she solved murders – for which the police resented her – in the books that Alan Bradley has written about her.
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Mma Makutsi
Female
She struggles with her poor skin and unflattering spectacles, but Mma Grace Makutsi has impressively high grades from her secretarial course and is a lady with skin on her nose and a sharp tongue. In Alexander McCall Smith’s suite of novels about The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana’s capital Gaborone, Mma Makutsi is first employed, but after a while becomes a part-owner of the agency. She is also happily married to Phuti Radiphuti.
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John March
Male
He was born into a family of affluent bankers who disown him on account of his choice of profession: he has been a rural sheriff for three years, and then a private detective in New York. After the death of his wife, things went downhill for him, but author Peter Spiegelman lets (the approximately 180 cm tall) John March sober up, start drinking orange juice and go out running, as well as manage to acquire strong self-discipline and a new girlfriend, Jane Lu.
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Çetin Ìkmen
Male
He is a self-willed detective in the police force of his birth city Istanbul, which he loves with all his heart. But he is well aware of the city’s less savoury sides, and the memory of crimes he has investigated has meant that he chain-smokes and also drinks too much – which greatly upsets his Muslim wife Fatma. Together the couple have a lot of children and the number steadily grows in Barbara Nadel’s books about him.