Photo: Quim Llenas/Cover/Getty Images (2006)
Sample of authors
Symons, Julian
Julian Gustave Symons was a British author and critic born in London, where he spent part of his life. His mother was English and his father a Russian Jew, a stern Victorian patriarch who gave his son little or no encouragement. Symons developed such a severe stammer in childhood that he was sent to a succession of state schools for retarded children. He was close to his twelve years older...
Literary figures
Mike (Michael) Padillo
Gender: Male
After the Second World War, he was forced (through blackmail) to become a spy and executioner for an extremely secret American secret service. But he is also the part-owner, together with ‘Mac’ McCorkle, of a bar in Bonn. Michael (Mike) Padillo is half Estonian, half Spanish, and would like to live a life in calm and peace, but in a suite of novels by Ross Thomas he is obliged to undertake sev...