Photo: Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images (1955)
Sample of authors
Innes, Hammond
Pseudonym used by the British novelist Ralph Hammond-Innes who was born in Horsham, Sussex, to Scottish parents. He attended Cranbrook School in Kent between 1927 and 1931 after which he did odd jobs, including working as a journalist. Between 1934 and 1940 he was employed at Financial News, later the Financial Times, in London. He also wrote novels to add to his income, and he published the...
Literary figures
Virgil Tibbs
Gender: Male
Since he is an Afro-American, he is arrested as a murder suspect in a little town in Mississippi by a racist sheriff – but he can identify himself as a police detective from Pasadena in California. Despite opposition from the town’s inhabitants, he helps the local police to solve the case. The sophisticated, low-key bachelor Virgil Tibbs returns later in a further half-dozen detective stories by J...