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Portrait image of Robert van Gulik Robert van Gulik with wife Shui Shih-fang 1946

Sample of authors

Gulik, Robert van

Robert Hans van Gulik was born in Zutphen, the Netherlands, and grew up in Batavia (now Jakarta) in the former Dutch East Indies, where his father served as a medical officer in the Dutch Army. Van Gulik’s father collected Chinese porcelain and passed his interest on to his son who taught himself Mandarin. Robert van Gulik was fascinated by Chinese history and culture, and he became an authority o...

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Literary figures

Jack Tallon

Gender: Male

Police officer Jack Tallon is utterly bored by Pasadena, where he works, and gratefully accepts the offer of the job of police chief in little Whitewater. The very bigoted small-town population are wary of a stranger, and his is suspected – among other things – of rape. In three books by John Ball, Jack Tallon struggles not only to solve crimes, but also to deal with the suspicious attitude of the...

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