Photo: Yann Gamblin/Paris Match via Getty Images (1996)
Sample of authors
Puzo, Mario
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author born in a slum known as Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan, New York. His parents were both immigrants from Pietradefusi in the Avellino province, Italy. He had a difficult upbringing, especially after his father abandoned the family at the beginning of the 1930s and left his wife to care for their seven children on her own. Puzo won grants so he could attend C...
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...