Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (1978)
Sample of authors
Bagley, Desmond
British author of thrillers born in Kendal, Cumbria (formerly Westmorland), in northwest England, an area known as the Lake District. His father was a miner who became ill and moved his family to Blackpool when Bagley was about twelve years old. There he ran a boarding house for actors. Desmond Bagley, who suffered from a bad stutter, left school when he was fourteen and worked in odd jobs at a...
Literary figures
Melita Pargeter
Gender: Female
Mrs Melita Pargeter refuses to accept that her deceased husband was the man he was: a smart thief and fraudster. He left her a fortune and a promise from his gang to help her. She is, says author Simon Brett, a friendly, white-haired elderly lady, whose ample appearance hides a will of steel, great stubbornness and a sharp tongue – which makes her a formidable amateur detective.