Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images (2008)
Sample of authors
Block, Lawrence
Lawrence Block is an American author of crime fiction born in Buffalo. He attended Antioch College, Ohio, between 1955 and 1959 without graduating. In order to pay for his education he began to work for a magazine publisher, and in February 1958 the story You Can’t Lose was printed in the pulp magazine Manhunt. The story also features in the interview book After Hours (1995, see References). M...
Literary figures
Virgil Tibbs
Gender: Male
Since he is an Afro-American, he is arrested as a murder suspect in a little town in Mississippi by a racist sheriff – but he can identify himself as a police detective from Pasadena in California. Despite opposition from the town’s inhabitants, he helps the local police to solve the case. The sophisticated, low-key bachelor Virgil Tibbs returns later in a further half-dozen detective stories by J...