Sample of literary figures
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Mma Ramotswe
Female
In Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, Mma Precious Ramotswe runs The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The cases she works with, don’t usually concern major crimes, but are more about solving everyday problems for the clients. Mma Ratmotswe loves tea and her husband, the kind J.L.B. Matekoni, as well as their two adoptive children: all tenderly described by the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith.
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Varg Veum
Male
With his books about the private detective Varg Veum, author Gunnar Staalesen transferred American hardboiled noir to a Scandinavian setting – Bergen in Norway. Veum is one of the best-known fictional characters in Norway; he features in several television productions as well as a comic strip. He operates in widely different social settings and is prone to commenting on current affairs.
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Barbara Havers
Female
Contrary to many other female police officers in crime fiction Barbara Havers is not a good-looking woman. Her creator, Elizabeth George, claims she made her deliberately unattractive and unkempt. Havers has cooperation issues and she is moody, stubborn and temperamental. Yet she has a functional working relationship with her complete opposite, the well bred, neatly turned out Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.
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Ewert Grens
Male
Middle-aged detective chief inspector in Stockholm, ordinary-looking, with thinning hair and a wrinkled face. He suffers from a severe trauma: his wife Anni suffered severe brain damage in an accident that he caused. Now Ewert Grens visits her every day in the care home. His only consolation is the songs sung by Siw Malmkvist, and he is always listening to them in the novels by Anders Roslund – the early novels were written together with Börge Hellström.