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Portrait image of John Fowles Photo: Ulf Andersen / Hulton Archive via Getty Images (1987)

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Fowles, John

John Robert Fowles was born in a middle-class family in the Essex town of Leigh-on-Sea. His father, Robert Fowles, dreamt of a career in the legal profession, but when the First World War broke out he was instead forced to take over the family's tobacco business. His mother, Gladys May, was a housewife. Fowles grew up in the security of a terraced housing estate, but later in life he confessed...

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Literary figures

Joe Ryker

Gender: Male

A worn-out but effective police detective in New York, accustomed to violence and for that reason always armed with two revolvers. He is a disillusioned lone wolf and the main character in a suite of novels by Jack Cannon (pseudonym for Nelson DeMille). Disagreement about rights, however, meant that for a while several authors wrote books about Joe Ryker – and DeMille was forced to re-name his h...

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