Sample of literary figures
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Embla Nystrom
Female
Former Nordic champion boxer (light welterweight), now a county police officer in the west of Sweden. She is about 30 years old and muscular, with curly reddish-brown hair and blue-green eyes in a somewhat round face: cute but not pretty, according to her creator Helene Tursten. Having grown up with three brothers, Embla Nystrom knows how to put lads in their place. The man in her life is little Elliot, the son of her ex-husband Jason.
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Vesper Johnson
Male
Detective Inspector Vesper Johnson is a unique, and very entertaining, character. He is vain with a “beaver” face and rakish moustache; he wears high heels and dyes his hair. Johnson solves crime in a string of novels by Stieg Trenter in which the protagonist is the photographer Harry Friberg. After Trenter’s death, his wife Ulla continued to write her own books about Friberg and Johnson.
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Dave Gurney
Male
A well-built police detective in New York who commands respect, renowned for having caught several serial murderers, who retires already when he is about 50 years old. He moves to the countryside with his wife Madeleine and their son, but can’t resist from privately investigating murders. He admits that this affects his family life, and thus always has a bad conscience, according to his creator John Verdon.
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Camille Verhœven
Male
Author Pierre Lemaitre doesn’t make life easy for his middle-aged detective chief inspector, Camille Verhœven, in Paris. His pregnant wife is tortured to death in the first book: in the fourth book, his girlfriend Anne Forestier is almost killed in connection with a robbery. The short and entirely bald police officer, who isn’t always particularly sympathetic, solves the cases; then he resigns.