DI John Rebus

Featured in: Ian Rankin’s series taking place in and around Edinburgh.

What I love about him: his quirky style, his taste in music, his reckless behaviour. His name! His accent 🙂

What I hate about him: his attitude to his ex-wife, Rhona, although he loves her, his stubbornness.

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Rebus as seen on the TV-series

DI Harry Hole

Featured in: Jo Nesbo’s series taking place in Oslo (and Hong-Kong).

What I love about him: His sense of duty, his self-loathing, his passion for his work. I also love the settings of Nesbo’s books even though I’ve never been to Oslo, or Norway for that matter!

What I hate about him: [spoiler] that he left his wife at the airport when he had promised he would fly away with her. His recklessness with his own life, almost like a suicidal streak.

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Author of Harry Hole, Jo Nesbo

DI Joona Linna

Featured in: Created by pair of authors Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril writing under the pseudonym Lars Kepler.

Joona’s cases are hard and get under your skin and his murderers are ruthless and personal.

What I love about him: I love the way he hunts the murderers down relentlessly trying to clear the earth of all evil.

I hate about him: how he sacrifices himself for higher causes. I pity him for the guilt with which he has to live.

Erica Falck

Featured in: Camilla Läckberg’s swedish crime novels taking place in the cute village of Fjällbacka, along with her partner and [spoiler] later husband, Patrick Hedström.

What I love about her: that is she not a detective but a writer, who happens to be found at the right spot at the right time and has a nosy and intuitive attitude to true crime stories.

What I hate about her: her obsession with kids and family! Totally opposite to all the other detectives featured in this post!!!

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Poster for the mini-series based on Lackberg’s books

Forensic Anthropologist Ruth Galloway

Featured in: Elly Griffiths’ series taking place in Norfolk.

What I love about her: that she is the accidental heroin of her own life 🙂 Aren’t we all, though? Her unconventional friends. Her house!

What I hate about her: her lack of self-confidence about her personal life and appearance!

I just have to add how much I love the setting of these books at the Norfolk area and marshland!

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One of the Ruth Galloway books

Investigative Analyst Fredrika Bergman 

Featured in: Kristina Ohlsson’s novels, set in Sweden

What I love about her: That she is a civilian and has the reservations and doubts that are not allowed in the police corp. Her house! I imagine it as the embodiment of Scandinavian style 😛

What I hate about her: Her doubts, which I guess come with the antagonism of having to work with all the male professional investigators.

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The first in the series feat. Fredrika Bergman

Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope

Featured in: Ann Cleeves’ novels taking place in northern England.

What I love about her: Oh, the sweet, sour, cunning Vera Stanhope, what is there not to like? Her sense of humour, her appetite, her self-sarcasm. The way she gets under people’s skins.

What I hate about her: How she teases her colleague John Ashford about his orthodox manners, his family, him being a “soft touch”. But these are the same things that she secretly envies him for, so I forgive her 🙂

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DI Vera Stanhope as seen on the TV-series “Vera”

What most of those detectives have in common: they are loners, alcoholics, reckless, clever, estranged from partners. They are all somehow scarred (Vera Stanhope even has eczema, for heaven’s sake). They have good taste in music (most of them) and have a love/hate relationship with food.

Links on Detective’s names lead to Greek sites, while the links on the author’s names link to the international sites.

Do you miss someone? Do you think I should have featured some more? I didn’t write about Camilleri or Montalbano as I feel they need more words than a short post… But I think I hear some of you murmuring something about a certain Cormoran Strike??? Or any others?