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Portrait of Mario Puzo Photo: Yann Gamblin/Paris Match via Getty Images (1996)

Sample of authors

Puzo, Mario

Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author born in a slum known as Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan, New York. His parents were both immigrants from Pietradefusi in the Avellino province, Italy. He had a difficult upbringing, especially after his father abandoned the family at the beginning of the 1930s and left his wife to care for their seven children on her own. Puzo won grants so he could attend C...

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Literary figures

Karen Pirie

Gender: Female

She is an overweight workaholic, but also exceptionally skilful when it comes to investigating old, unsolved cases in police novels by Val McDermid. Karen Pirie is the head of the Historic Cases Unit with its head office in Fife in Scotland. Her private life is minimal – but includes a sweetheart, her colleague Phil Parhatka, and she mourns deeply when he is killed on duty. But she soon throws h...

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