Photo: Peter Peitsch (2005) / www.peitschphoto.com
Sample of authors
Smith, Martin Cruz
Martin Cruz Smith, born Martin William Smith, was an American author of thrillers born in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father was a jazz musician and his mother a jazz singer. She was of Pueblo descent and was active in the Native American civil rights movement. The family moved homes several times during Smith’s youth, but he predominantly grew up in Philadelphia where he attended Germantown A...
Literary figures
Judy Hammer
Gender: Female
Superintendent Judy Hammer is head of a police department in North Carolina, Virginia, where she has to deal with both city crime and stubborn islanders in a short suite of novels by Patricia Cornwell. Hammer is a middle-aged, unhappily married but very fond of her young colleague Andy Brazil, who becomes her right hand. In the books about them, realistic police work is combined with some less...