Photo: Santi Visalli / Getty Images (1967)
Sample of authors
Stout, Rex
The American author Rex Todhunter Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana, as the sixth of nine children to John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout who were both Quakers. When he was only a few months old, the family moved to Topeka, Kansas. As a child, Stout was good at mathematics and languages and he was later admitted to the University of Kansas at Lawrence, but his family could not afford to pay...
Literary figures
Karen Pirie
Gender: Female
She is an overweight workaholic, but also exceptionally skilful when it comes to investigating old, unsolved cases in police novels by Val McDermid. Karen Pirie is the head of the Historic Cases Unit with its head office in Fife in Scotland. Her private life is minimal – but includes a sweetheart, her colleague Phil Parhatka, and she mourns deeply when he is killed on duty. But she soon throws h...