Photo: Chris Pizzello / AP/TT (2015)
Sample of authors
Grimes, Martha
Martha Grimes is an American author of detective stories born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father, a lawyer, died when she was six years old and she and her brother grew up with their mother, a busy businesswoman who managed the Mountain Lake Hotel in West Maryland. After leaving high school she attended the University of Maryland, College Park, graduating with a BA in English in 1954 and an...
Literary figures
Arlette van der Valk
Gender: Female
When she was young, she was called Davidson, but the changed her surname after marrying Detective Superintendent Piet Van der Valk in Amsterdam. She is a temperamental, intelligent master-chef and music lover, a minor character in most of the novels about her husband. When he is murdered, Arlette Van der Valk exposes the perpetrator, and then continues as a private detective to solve cases on...