Sample of literary figures
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Erlendur
Male
A detective inspector in Reykjavík, and the main character in a row of police novels by Arnaldur Indriðason. Erlendur – his surname, Sveinsson, is rarely named as is customary in Iceland – is a skilful and empathetic police officer, but rather tired and sometimes anxiety-ridden. One reason is that he left his family when the children were small, for reasons that he can’t himself remember. His ex-wife still hates him for this, and both his son and his daughter ended up abusing drugs.
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V.I. Warshawski
Female
Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski is a hardboiled private detective in Chicago. She often rescues people on the margins of society and she often she rails against crooked politicians, bigotry, and toned-down political scandals. Her father is Polish and her mother was Jewish – and she has more lovers than she has friends according to the author, Sara Paretsky.
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Patrik Hedstrom
Male
He is employed as a detective inspector in Tanumshede, western Sweden, but spends most of his time in Fjällbacka, where he lives and – together with his wife, author Erica Falck – solves a row of murder cases in the books by Camilla Läckberg. Patrik Hedstrom is partly based on Läckberg’s first husband, and is described as a ‘completely ordinary guy’, but he is a skilled crime investigator with quite a lot of charm.
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Filip Collin
Male
A very eloquent, smart and worldly Swedish adventurer and gentleman thief, who eventually also turns out to be a skilled detective. Filip Collin, who often calls himself Professor Pelotard, together with his companions – the Frenchman Lavertisse and the Englishman Graham – is mainly engaged in financial crime in a number of books written by Frank Heller (pseudonym for Gunnar Serner).