Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1999)
Sample of authors
Crumley, James
The American author and teacher James Arthur Crumley never reached bestseller status. However, he was instrumental in the development of hardboiled crime fiction from the 1970s onwards.
Crumley was born at Three Rivers, southern Texas. His father was an oil field foreman and his mother a waitress. The family was poor; his mother forced her son to attend church, but she never went herself since...
Literary figures
Nick Velvet
Gender: Male
He is a professional thief, but he only steals worthless objects to order. This means that author Edward D. Hoch gives him double tasks: partly to carry out the robberies, partly to work out why somebody wants to pay his very high fee to steal, say, water or dust. Nick Velvet is a well-dressed, handsome, worldly gentleman with a patient girlfriend, Gloria Merchant, at his side.