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Portrait of Alistair MacLean Photo: Popperfoto via Getty Images (1960)

Sample of authors

MacLean, Alistair

The Scottish author Alistair Stuart MacLean was born in Shettleston, Glasgow, in a Gaelic-speaking family as Alasdair MacGill-Eain (his Gaelic name was anglicised by the British authorities). His father was a Church of Scotland minister. While the author was still a baby, the family moved to a farm near Daviot in the Highlands. After the death of his father, his mother returned to Glasgow with...

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Literary figures

Virgil Tibbs

Gender: Male

Since he is an Afro-American, he is arrested as a murder suspect in a little town in Mississippi by a racist sheriff – but he can identify himself as a police detective from Pasadena in California. Despite opposition from the town’s inhabitants, he helps the local police to solve the case. The sophisticated, low-key bachelor Virgil Tibbs returns later in a further half-dozen detective stories by J...

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