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Portrait image of Eliot Pattison Photo: Bill Uhrich/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images (2018)

Sample of authors

Pattison, Eliot

The American author and lawyer, Joseph Eliot Pattison, was born in Philadelphia. He grew up on a farm run by his father; his mother was a bank official. As a child, he devoured books and often disappeared into the forest to read. An aunt who was a librarian in the American army used to supply him with literature from the various countries where she was stationed. Pattison himself says that the...

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Literary figures

Hercule Poirot

Gender: Male

The Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot worked for the Belgian police until Agatha Christie transferred him to England. Poirot is characterised by his vanity, his strong French accent, his egg-shaped head and his impressive moustache, and he solves crime in a string of classic whodunits. Poirot eventually became so famous that The Times published an obituary when Christie killed him off in...

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