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Portrait image of Ian Rankin Ian Rankin and Maj Sjöwall
Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex

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Rankin, Ian

The Scottish crime writer Ian James Rankin was born in the coal mining town of Cardenden, Fife, where his father owned a grocery store. His mother worked in a school canteen. There were few books at home, and Rankin began to visit his local library as a child and began to write short stories as a teenager. He attended Denend Primary School in Cardendan and later Auchterderran Junior High at...

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Literary figures

Max (James) Maxted

Gender: Male

In 1919, he is a young war veteran and famed as a fighter pilot. He wants to start a school for pilots, but when his influential father dies in a strange accident, the handsome and charismatic James ‘Max’ Maxted is obliged to investigate the case – which he succeeds in doing. After which, author Robert Goddard lets him be a double agent in a couple of novels, in which he battles with the German ma...

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