Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (2017)
Sample of authors
King, Stephen
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, Donald Pollock, a vacuum cleaner salesman, sailor and philanderer (King has a half-sister in Brazil), went through a number of aliases before he changed his surname to King. When Stephen was two years old, his father went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. Stephen grew up in poor circumstances with his mother Ruth and his...
Literary figures
Michael McLoughlin
Gender: Male
An older, somewhat overweight police officer in Dublin, who after his retirement has bought a house in a bathing resort outside the town. He is single – but not uninterested in women – and his immediate family is small: his mother, who lives in an old people’s home, and a sister. His father, who was also a police officer, was killed on duty. As a pensioner, Michael McLoughlin is reluctantly invol...