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Portrait of Len Deighton Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (1986)

Sample of authors

Deighton, Len

The British author Len Deighton was born as Leonard Cyril Deighton in London. His father was a chauffeur; his mother worked in a hotel kitchen. He was a boy when he helped his father as a volunteer during the London Blitz. After leaving school he worked briefly as a railway clerk, and at the age of seventeen he joined the Royal Air Force Special Investigation Branch as a photographer. He then...

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Literary figures

Mrs. Norris

Gender: Female

Her husband died after they had been married a short time, so Mrs Norris – whose first name is Annie, which is rarely used – moved to Scotland and became the housekeeper for a general. The short and somewhat plump elderly lady becomes involved in murder cases which she solves in novels by Dorothy Salisbury Davis with the help of her ward James ‘Jimmie’ Jarvis and Jasper Tully, the prosecutor’s ass...

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