Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1979)
Sample of authors
Manchette, Jean-Patrick
Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French author credited for having revolutionised noir fiction in France. He was born in Marseille. In 1945, the family moved to Malakoff in the Paris area. In 1960, after finishing his upper-secondary education, he moved to Paris where he spent most of his life and where he read English at the Sorbonne.
Manchette joined the militant left during the Algerian War of...
Literary figures
Tom Thorne
Gender: Male
Tom Thorne is a middle-aged, somewhat worse for wear detective inspector in London. In the early books he is dull and conventional. However, his creator, Mark Billingham, has subsequently turned him into a multi-faceted character with bad as well as good qualities. He is persistent and conscientious, but he can also be short-tempered, grumpy and prone to making disastrous mistakes. Well into the...