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
Jill Francis
Gender: Female
The young journalist, Jill Francis, leaves London after breaking up from a relationship with a married man. She gets a job in the fictive town of Lydmouth, where she investigates and writes about a row of crimes. She also meets police detective Richard Thornhill, and the two – reluctantly – start an affair even though he is a married father of two. Andrew Taylor has written the books about the cou...