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Portrait of Fred Vargas Photo: Eamonn McCabe/Popperfoto via Getty Images (2008)

Sample of authors

Vargas, Fred

Fred Vargas is a pseudonym used by the French historian, archaeologist and crime writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. "Vargas" was a character played by Ava Gardener in The Barefoot Contessa; the name was first used by Audoin-Rouzeau’s twin sister Joëlle, the visual artist Jo Vargas.
Their father, Philippe Audoin-Rouzeau, was a journalist and a famous figure in surrealist circles. He was very part...

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Literary figures

Bertha Cool

Gender: Female

Cool is a sturdy woman in her sixties who runs a private detective agency on the fringes of the law. She is a hardboiled lady who smokes, drinks and swears, so she caused some attention when the books about her were launched in the 1930s by A. A. Fair (a pen name used by Erle Stanley Gardner). Her trusted helper is a wiry, sly lawyer called Donald Lam.

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