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Portrait image of P.D. James Photo: Anders Wiklund / TT

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James, P.D.

English crime writer born in Oxford as Phyllis Dorothy James. She graduated from the Cambridge High School for Girls in 1937. She served in the Red Cross during the war, and in 1941 she married Ernest Connor Bantry White. Although she dreamed of becoming a writer she helped her husband pass medical school while looking after the couple's daughters. After his return from the war, her husband...

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Literary figures

Kommissarie Modeste Laviolette

Gender: Male

The somewhat misanthropic and contemplative Inspector Modeste Laviolette is working in Provence. He is overweight and he loves food and champagne. He has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps; his grandfather was chief of police. Laviolette is a bachelor and animal lover who lives with his housekeeper Chabassut and her 14 cats – he takes care of them after her death – in a string of novels by Pi...

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