Sample of literary figures
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Flavia de Luce
Female
In the 1950s, the motherless Flavia de Luce was not highly regarded by her father and sisters. She was indeed a rather ordinary and everyday 11-12-year-old (with dental braces), but mature for her age, and determined too, with a mind of her own and smart, and she busied herself with nasty-smelling chemistry experiments. Besides, she solved murders – for which the police resented her – in the books that Alan Bradley has written about her.
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Alex Morrow
Female
Morrow is a working class detective from Glasgow. She is the mother of twins and the protagonist in a series of tartan noir books by Denise Mina. Morrow is not always very forthcoming or correct, but she struggles to combine her job with being a mother and against misogynous bosses and colleagues in a city characterised by increasing class differences and violent crime.
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Peter Decker
Male
When he falls in love with the Jewish widow Rina Lazarus, the parents of the divorced single father and police inspector Peter Decker reveal that he is adopted, and that his biological parents were Jews. He changes religion, and can marry Rina. Together, they solve a row of criminal cases in Faye Kellerman’s books, where one of them – or sometimes both of them – plays the main role.
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Victor Legris
Male
In the late 19th century, he runs a bookshop, Librairie Elzévir, in Paris together with his Japanese adoptive father Kenji Mori. In his free time, Victor Legris is an enthusiastic amateur detective and photographer. He is something of a clothes snob, is athletically built and has an appearance that interests women. Claude Izner (pseudonym for Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre) has written a suite of novels about him.