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Portrait image of Émile Gaboriau

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Gaboriau, Émile

While Edgar Allan Poe, the American author of short stories, is generally considered to be the father of modern crime fiction, Émile Gaboriau has been cited as the father of the crime novel. He was the first to use at least four defining elements of the genre: 1) He wrote briefly and succinctly compared to his contemporaries and his novels are driven by the crime plot. 2) His protagonists are ...

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Literary figures

Jack Tallon

Gender: Male

Police officer Jack Tallon is utterly bored by Pasadena, where he works, and gratefully accepts the offer of the job of police chief in little Whitewater. The very bigoted small-town population are wary of a stranger, and his is suspected – among other things – of rape. In three books by John Ball, Jack Tallon struggles not only to solve crimes, but also to deal with the suspicious attitude of the...

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