Kirth Gersen

Kirth Gersen is the protagonist of the five Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance, set approximately 1500 years in the future. When he was a boy, he and his grandfather were the only members of a peaceful and harmless space colony to escape a massacre and slave raid (the "Mount Pleasant Massacre") perpetrated by pirates led by five master criminals known as the "Demon Princes." The grandfather devotes the rest of his life to training the young Gersen—on Earth, Alphanor and other central planets of the Oikumene—to be the avenger who will track down and summarily execute the Demon Princes.

Gersen is about 34 at the beginning of Star King, the first book in the series. He is an expert in numerous fighting techniques, including bare-handed combat, knife-fighting, and the exotic poisoning techniques practiced by the Sarkoy. He is also intelligent and patient, capable of a good deal of deductive work, and possessed of ample courage, given that his life's quest must necessarily bring him into opposition with five of the inhabited galaxy's most dangerous and unscrupulous criminals, all of whom possess vast resources (in the case of Viole Falushe, a planet of his own).

At the beginning of his quest, Gersen owns a small spaceship, and otherwise possesses little wealth, though enough to go extremely well armed when circumstances both demand and permit it, and enough to further his detective work with occasional minor purchases and bribes. During the events described in The Killing Machine, however, Gersen gains fabulous wealth (10 billion SVU in cash) by running a scam on Kokor Hekkus, a Demon Prince who is holding him for ransom, and on Interchange, the institution that facilities the ransoming of kidnap victims. However, he is not given to conspicuous consumption and, barring expenditure on a succession of new and more luxurious spacecraft, he uses his money mostly to further his work. He acquires at least one bank and a magazine with galaxy-wide circulation, the latter allowing him to assume the identity of a reporter from time to time.

Given his unusual circumstances, it would not be unreasonable to expect Gersen to be a borderline sociopath. Instead, he is as much concerned with the welfare of his fellow man as an average man might be, and not one who had spent fifteen years or more in training to become an assassin. He displays chivalry upon occasion, inconveniencing himself, sustaining injury or putting himself in harm's way to rescue women who are in need.

...
Wikipedia