Meny
Portrait image of Ian Rankin Ian Rankin and Maj Sjöwall
Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex

Sample of authors

Rankin, Ian

The Scottish crime writer Ian James Rankin was born in the coal mining town of Cardenden, Fife, where his father owned a grocery store. His mother worked in a school canteen. There were few books at home, and Rankin began to visit his local library as a child and began to write short stories as a teenager. He attended Denend Primary School in Cardendan and later Auchterderran Junior High at...

Further reading

Literary figures

Bertha Cool

Gender: Female

Cool is a sturdy woman in her sixties who runs a private detective agency on the fringes of the law. She is a hardboiled lady who smokes, drinks and swears, so she caused some attention when the books about her were launched in the 1930s by A. A. Fair (a pen name used by Erle Stanley Gardner). Her trusted helper is a wiry, sly lawyer called Donald Lam.

Further reading