Photo: Tina Fineberg / AP/TT (2006)
Sample of authors
Grisham, John
American author, lawyer and former politician born in Jonesboro, Arkansas. His father was a construction worker who travelled around the southern United States with his family in search of work. They settled in Southaven, Mississippi, when John Grisham was four. They were stretched for money and Grisham began to take odd jobs as a teenager. He was encouraged by his mother to enrol at a college,...
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.