Photo: Murray/Fairfax Media via Getty Images (1960)
Sample of authors
Marsh, Ngaio
The New Zealand author Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh was born in Merivale, Christchurch. Her father was an immigrant English bank manager and her mother was born in New Zealand, although her family too originally came from England. Ngaio is the Maori word for "reflection on water". A somewhat eccentric and confused man, Marsh's father did not report his daughter's birth to the authorities until 1900,...
Literary figures
Leonidas Witherall
Gender: Male
He is often called William or Bill by his friends, since in appearance he is extremely like the portrait of William Shakespeare. However, Leonidas Witherall is not a man of the theatre: he is an unmarried former headmaster who was ruined during the depression in the 1930s and now supports himself by writing pulp detective fiction in Boston. There he also solves mysterious cases in eight books by...