Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1979)
Sample of authors
Manchette, Jean-Patrick
Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French author credited for having revolutionised noir fiction in France. He was born in Marseille. In 1945, the family moved to Malakoff in the Paris area. In 1960, after finishing his upper-secondary education, he moved to Paris where he spent most of his life and where he read English at the Sorbonne.
Manchette joined the militant left during the Algerian War of...
Literary figures
Merci Rayborn
Gender: Female
Female police detective, based in Orange County in California and featured in a trilogy by T. Jefferson Parker. Merci Rayborn is young, attractive, stubborn and devoted to her work – but is dogged by misfortune. Already in the first book, she makes a mistake which leads to the death of an older colleague – and he is the father of her as-yet-unborn son. As a single mother, she solves crimes where h...