Photo: Ulf Andersen / Getty Images Entertainment (2012)
Sample of authors
Hiaasen, Carl
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist and author of thrillers. He was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is of Norwegian descent. He was a great nature lover even as a child, and became an investigative journalist in order to look into the exploitation of the Florida wetlands. His father gave him a typewriter when he was six years old; at high school he co-founded the satirical magazine More...
Literary figures
Piet van der Valk
Gender: Male
An independent, eccentric and short-tempered detective superintendent with the police in Amsterdam, the main character in a suite of police novels by Englishman Nicolas Freeling. Piet van der Valk is arrogant, but also critical of society and empathetic. He is married to Arlette with whom he has two sons and an adopted daughter. He is killed during an investigation, and his wife takes over the...