OK, I’ll bite… in no particular order:
Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise. A triumph for human raw material over adverse circumstances; a dispossessed orphan in a refugee camp who grows up as a mind-bogglingly omni-competent adventuress, who still has a human side.
John le Carré’s George Smiley. The expert spy whose inadequacies as a human being are both his weakness and his strength.
Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. Look, just read the book…
In a similar, but earlier, vein, Gudrun Osvif’s-Daughter, the magnetic figure at the heart of the Laxdæla Saga.
Robertson Davies’ Francis Cornish, the man at the centre of the Cornish trilogy, whose life story takes up the middle book, What’s Bred in the Bone.
Most efforts to retell classic stories from the monster’s point of view suck hard enough to clean the carpet. But John Gardner’s Grendel is a different kettle of fish; an existentialist monster questioning his place in the world and the story.
E.R. Eddison’s writing is full of memorable larger-than-life characters; if I had to pick just one, it’d be Lord Gro, the Machiavellian plotter and multiple turncoat from The Worm Ouroboros, who is dominated by his fatal character flaw - he always sides with the underdog. Unfortunately, once he gets to work, the underdog swiftly stops being “under” anymore…
“Richard Stark”'s Parker; iron-nerved, ruthless, totally amoral, the professional criminal’s professional criminal.