Sample of literary figures
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Philip Marlowe
Male
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the archetype of the hardboiled American private eye. Many subsequent authors of crime fiction have found inspiration in the lonesome, brooding detective. Marlowe is a former investigator at the district attorney’s office of Los Angeles County, he is well read, interested in social issues, and he moves as effortlessly in the upper echelons of society as in back alleys and shady bars thanks to his wisecracking repartee.
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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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Sebastian Bergman
Male
He was a popular person, respected as a forensic psychologist and regarded as Sweden’s foremost expert on criminal profiling – until he lost his wife and daughter in a natural catastrophe. Then he stopped working, became a sex-addict and generally inaccessible. Sebastian Bergman has, however, reluctantly thawed and allowed himself to be tempted back to his work by Hans Rosenfeldt and Michael Hjorth.
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Kinsey Millhone
Female
Kinsey Millhone is an American private detective with a messy private life. Her parents died in a car crash when she was still young, both her marriages ended in divorce, and her love affairs are brief. On the other hand, she is very good at her job, as a string of novels by Sue Grafton show. She sometimes makes guest appearances in books by other authors.