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Portrait of Jean-Patrick Manchette Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1979)

Sample of authors

Manchette, Jean-Patrick

Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French author credited for having revolutionised noir fiction in France. He was born in Marseille. In 1945, the family moved to Malakoff in the Paris area. In 1960, after finishing his upper-secondary education, he moved to Paris where he spent most of his life and where he read English at the Sorbonne.
Manchette joined the militant left during the Algerian War of...

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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...

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