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 J. Malone
Gender: Male
He is a lawyer in Chicago, always longing for a drink, willing ladies and rich clients. John Joseph Malone is a slovenly, sweaty and red-faced little man, always wearing a creased suit. But he is a clever and unconventional detective in the entertaining novels by Craig Rice (pseudonym for Georgiana Randolph Craig), in which he usually has the married couple Jake and Helene Justus by his side.