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Portrait image of John Fowles Photo: Ulf Andersen / Hulton Archive via Getty Images (1987)

Sample of authors

Fowles, John

John Robert Fowles was born in a middle-class family in the Essex town of Leigh-on-Sea. His father, Robert Fowles, dreamt of a career in the legal profession, but when the First World War broke out he was instead forced to take over the family's tobacco business. His mother, Gladys May, was a housewife. Fowles grew up in the security of a terraced housing estate, but later in life he confessed...

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Theme article

History of crime fiction

By: Johan Wopenka

Depending upon how one wishes to define the concept ‘crime fiction’, it is possible to trace its history and roots back in time. When Dorothy L. Sayers compiled her comprehensive three-volume anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928–34) she started with two stories from the Old Testament, and when Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (alias Ellery Queen) wrote their fundamental The Detective Short Story : A Bibliography (1942), they listed eight Chinese collections of short stories which are believed to have been written down between 600 A.D. and 1800 A.D., some of them containing stories based on an older, oral tradition.

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Literary figures

Kenneth Carlisle

Gender: Male

A popular and charming silent-movie star who starts a new career when the talkies make their breakthrough – even though, in contrast to many colleagues, he has a good voice. But Kenneth Carlisle is fed up with show business, of the idolatry and of not having any private life, explains author Carolyn Wells. Instead, he establishes himself as a private detective in Manhattan, and solves cases in v...

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