Meny

Sample of literary figures

  • Judy Hammer

    Female

    Superintendent Judy Hammer is head of a police department in North Carolina, Virginia, where she has to deal with both city crime and stubborn islanders in a short suite of novels by Patricia Cornwell. Hammer is a middle-aged, unhappily married but very fond of her young colleague Andy Brazil, who becomes her right hand. In the books about them, realistic police work is combined with some less realistic elements.

    Further reading

  • Hercule Poirot

    Male

    The Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot worked for the Belgian police until Agatha Christie transferred him to England. Poirot is characterised by his vanity, his strong French accent, his egg-shaped head and his impressive moustache, and he solves crime in a string of classic whodunits. Poirot eventually became so famous that <i>The Times</i> published an obituary when Christie killed him off in one of her books.

    Further reading

  • Matthew Hope

    Male

    Lawyer Matthew Hope moves with his wife Susan and daughter Joanna from Chicago to Calusa in Florida to work with commercial law for a small law firm. But nothing goes as he wished: thanks to his detective talents, he unwillingly becomes a leading criminal lawyer and his marriage ends in divorce, as we read in the books by Ed McBain (pseudonym for Evan Hunter).

    Further reading

  • Rebecka Martinsson

    Female

    Beautiful and well-educated lawyer – who first works in a law firm and later becomes a public prosecutor – who has a central role in all of Åsa Larsson’s crime stories. In the first books, Rebecka Martinsson is living in Stockholm, but her work takes her to Kiruna, where she grew up, and she later moves back there. She has quite a lot of problems at work as well as in her private life, but is supported by friends, including the police officer Anna-Maria Mella.

    Further reading