Photo: Ulla Montan
Sample of authors
Dexter, Colin
The British crime writer Colin Dexter grew up in Stamford, Lincolnshire. After completing his military service in 1950, he read classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1953 and receiving an honorary masters degree in 1958. Dexter was a grammar school teacher until 1966, when he started to experience problems with his hearing. He then worked for the University of Oxford Examination...
Literary figures
Vera Stanhope
Gender: Female
An eccentric, middle-aged, controversial detective chief inspector in Northumberland and in a series of police novels by Ann Cleeves. Stanhope is a grim lone wolf and workaholic, in part because as a child she was subjected to sexual abuse by an acquaintance of her single father. She still lives in her childhood home, drives her father’s old Landrover and solves murder cases in her own very s...