Photo: (1952) ANL/REX / TT
Sample of authors
Marquand, John P.
The American author John Phillips Marquand was born in Wilmington, Delaware. His parents were wealthy, but they lost their fortune in the financial panic of 1907 and were forced to move to Panama – Marquand’s father was a canal engineer – and Marquand was left in the care of his eccentric aunts. He then attended Harvard on a grant, which made him a socially inferior student at the prestigious univ...
Literary figures
Boysie (Brian) Oakes
Gender: Male
He is recruited as a spy by mistake, and is regarded as tough, ruthless and bloodthirsty. In actual fact, he is an easy-going, forgetful and cowardly mummy’s boy, who hires gangsters to carry out the acts of violence he is ordered to do. This doesn’t prevent Brian ‘Boysie’ Oakes from making a career. It is simplest to describe him as a parody of James Bond, and John Gardner has written a suite of...