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Portrait image of John Dickson Carr Photo: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images (1955)

Sample of authors

Carr, John Dickson

American author of detective stories born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His father was a criminal lawyer and politician who possessed a comprehensive collection of detective stories, so John Dickson Carr read books by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton from an early age. He soon decided he wanted to write his own stories, and made some of his first attempts while he...

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Literary figures

Emily Pollifax

Gender: Female

Elderly American widow, 60+, bored with tea parties and charity work, who applies for a job as a ‘secret agent’ with the CIA. She is allowed to try and manages it so well that she gets a permanent job and becomes the main character in a suite of novels by Dorothy Gilman. Mrs Emily Pollifax is quick-witted, articulate and has a brown belt in karate. She eventually marries the patient Cyrus Reed.

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