Sample of literary figures
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Amanda Pharrell
Female
One night as a college student, Amanda Pharrell had a nightmare in which she was being raped. In the darkness of her room she defended herself, and ended up stabbing someone to death – a young woman. Having spent seven years in prison, Amanda Pharrell has now reinvented herself as a private detective in a sparsely populated corner of Australia. Her Author Candice Fox describes her as being petite with blue eyes and orange hair.
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Vera Stanhope
Female
An eccentric, middle-aged, controversial detective chief inspector in Northumberland and in a series of police novels by Ann Cleeves. Stanhope is a grim lone wolf and workaholic, in part because as a child she was subjected to sexual abuse by an acquaintance of her single father. She still lives in her childhood home, drives her father’s old Landrover and solves murder cases in her own very special way.
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Erlendur
Male
A detective inspector in Reykjavík, and the main character in a row of police novels by Arnaldur Indriðason. Erlendur – his surname, Sveinsson, is rarely named as is customary in Iceland – is a skilful and empathetic police officer, but rather tired and sometimes anxiety-ridden. One reason is that he left his family when the children were small, for reasons that he can’t himself remember. His ex-wife still hates him for this, and both his son and his daughter ended up abusing drugs.
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Tom Barnaby
Male
Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Geoffrey ‘Tom’ Barnaby has become internationally famous via a number of ‘whodunit’ police novels, written by Caroline Graham, but primarily thanks to the TV series <i>Midsomer Murders</i>. He is a calm, patient, methodical and conscientious police investigator in the fictive town of Causton where he lives with his wife Joyce and daughter Cully. His right-hand man is DS Gavin Troy.