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
Leonard Pine
Gender: Male
Afro-American, physically fit, homosexual Vietnam veteran with an explosive temper. Leonard Pine grew up in the home of an uncle who disapproved of him because of his sexual orientation. He is good friends with his total opposite, the calm, pacifistic Hap Collins with roots in the American working class, and they work together for a detective agency in a long suite of stories filled with...