Photo: Francesco Da Vinci/Getty Images (c.1992)
Sample of authors
Gardner, John (f. 1926)
John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a clergyman. He briefly attended Cottham’s Preparatory School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1931, and after the family had moved to Wantage in Berkshire in 1933, King Alfred’s School 1934–1943. He joined the Home Guard at the start of the Second World War and in 1943 the Royal Marin...
Literary figures
Continental Op
Gender: Male
His name is never mentioned, but he is employed at the major private detective agency The Continental Agency’s offices in San Francisco and he solves crime all over the United States. Little is known about him apart from the fact that he is a good investigator, that he is unmarried and the he describes himself as “fat and forty”. He is the principal character in a string of short stories by Dashi...