Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images (2015)
Sample of authors
Roberts, Nora
The American author Nora Roberts was born as Eleanor Marie Robertson in Silver Spring, Maryland. She grew up as the only daughter, the youngest of five siblings, in a family of Irish descent. She married Ronald Aufdem-Brinke in 1968 when she was only 18 years old and straight after graduating from Montgomery Blair High School. For a while she worked as a secretary in a lawyers’ firm, but after t...
Literary figures
Sam Spade
Gender: Male
Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel and a few short stories about the American private detective Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon, however, is a major classic and like some of his short stories it is the precursor of the hardboiled detective story. The cynical, tough and outright rude Spade and his personal habits are so often copied that they have become clichés.