Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1999)
Sample of authors
Crumley, James
The American author and teacher James Arthur Crumley never reached bestseller status. However, he was instrumental in the development of hardboiled crime fiction from the 1970s onwards.
Crumley was born at Three Rivers, southern Texas. His father was an oil field foreman and his mother a waitress. The family was poor; his mother forced her son to attend church, but she never went herself since...
Literary figures
Daniel Calder
Gender: Male
Like his colleague, Samuel Behrens, he is a friendly, elderly gentleman – and one of the most cold-blooded and skilful executioners working for the British counter intelligence service. The two are the main characters in a number of commended short stories – but no novels – by Michael Gilbert. They live in the same village in the county of Kent, and are bachelors, but Calder (who is an expert on w...