Sample of literary figures
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Thursday Next
Female
She is called Thursday Next, and is an agent for a state organisation in an absurd, parallel world (i.e. parallel to our own) that is imbued with literary features. She is newly married – we get to know that her husband Landen Parke-Laine drowned when he was three years old – and has a son Friday. Her mother is called Wednesday. Jasper Fforde has written a suite of very different fantasy crime novels about Thursday Next and her world.
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Harry (Henry) Nelson
Male
Middle-aged detective chief inspector in Norfolk, where he cooperates with forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway in a series of detective stories by Elly Griffiths (pseudonym for Domenica Maxted). Harry Nelson is married to Michelle and has three children with her – but also a daughter with Galloway after a one-night-stand with her. He is tall and dark, with greying hair and has a reputation for being brusque when impatient.
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Siri Bergman
Female
Psychologist and psycho-therapist Siri Bergman, 30-something years old, lives alone in a converted summer cottage on Värmdö island near Stockholm, since her husband drowned. She eventually can move on after her loss, embarks on a relationship with police officer Markus and is given a role in the police profiling group. But her past haunts her in a suite of crime novels by the sisters Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff.
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Tommy Beresford
Male
The red-headed Thomas ‘Tommy’ Beresford is something of an unimaginative but stubborn Englishman, who took part in the First World War and was wounded twice. He subsequently married his childhood friend Prudence ‘Tuppence’ Cowley, and they have two children and adopt a third. Together, the couple solve a number of cases with good humour and entertaining dialogues in four novels and a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie.