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Portrait image of Peter O'Donnell Photo: Robert Ahlbom / Forflex

Sample of authors

O'Donnell, Peter

Peter O’Donnell was a British author born in Lewisham, London, to an Irish family. His father was a well-known crime reporter. O’Donnell attended Catford Central School in London, but he soon dropped out and began to write for youth magazines. In 1936, at the age of sixteen, he was employed to write comic strips.
He was drafted in 1938. During the first few years of his military service he was st...

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Literary figures

Sam Spade

Gender: Male

Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel and a few short stories about the American private detective Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon, however, is a major classic and like some of his short stories it is the precursor of the hardboiled detective story. The cynical, tough and outright rude Spade and his personal habits are so often copied that they have become clichés.

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