Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1999)
Sample of authors
Crumley, James
The American author and teacher James Arthur Crumley never reached bestseller status. However, he was instrumental in the development of hardboiled crime fiction from the 1970s onwards.
Crumley was born at Three Rivers, southern Texas. His father was an oil field foreman and his mother a waitress. The family was poor; his mother forced her son to attend church, but she never went herself since...
Literary figures
John Mallett
Gender: Male
It is not clear whether he really is called John: but author Cyril Hare (pseudonym for Gordon Clark) has privately indicated that such is the case. Mallett is a detective inspector at Scotland Yard. He is a widower, tall and well-built, with a mild-red face. He sees lunch as the most important event of the day, but nevertheless manages to solve a number of troublesome murder cases, more often...