Photo: Dave Moore, St. Louis County Library (2011) CC BY 2.0
Sample of authors
Spiegelman, Peter
The American crime writer Peter Spiegelman was born in New York. He grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, and has lived there all his life apart from a short period in Los Angeles. He began to write at a young age, creating his own "superheroes". He read a lot of crime fiction and poetry as a teenager, and he won an award in college for his poetry. Spiegelman read English at Vassar College, New York,...
Literary figures
Piet van der Valk
Gender: Male
An independent, eccentric and short-tempered detective superintendent with the police in Amsterdam, the main character in a suite of police novels by Englishman Nicolas Freeling. Piet van der Valk is arrogant, but also critical of society and empathetic. He is married to Arlette with whom he has two sons and an adopted daughter. He is killed during an investigation, and his wife takes over the...