Photo: Martin Hunter / TT (2008)
Sample of authors
Atkinson, Kate
The British author Kate Atkinson was born in York, her father was a shopkeeper. She read English literature at Dundee University, graduating with an MA in 1974. She did postgraduate studies in American literature, but left university and worked as a legal secretary, home help and teacher. She began her writing career by publishing romantic short stories in women’s magazines. Kate Atkinson has b...
Literary figures
Johnny Métal
Gender: Male
Hardboiled crime reporter, based in New York, where he is also busy infiltrating organised crime. He usually acts more as a private detective than as a journalist. Métal is the main character in half a dozen detective stories packed with cliches and written by Frank Harding, a pseudonym of the French author Léo Malet, who was strongly inspired by Dashiell Hammett when he wrote the novels.