Sample of authors
Reilly, Helen
Critics often regard Helen Reilly as one of the most important female American crime writers of the 1930s. One reason for this distinction is that most of her peers at the time dedicated themselves to romantic suspense, while Reilly instead wrote a series of realistic stories about police work, told from the perspective of the cops themselves. Her main protagonist is inspector McKee of the...
Literary figures
John Poole
Gender: Male
When Henry Wade (pseudonym for Henry Aubrey-Fletcher) introduced the pipe-smoking police detective John Poole in 1934, he was a new type of police officer in crime fiction: well brought-up, charming, with an academic education and from a good family. He is just over 180cm tall, athletically built, with a firm mouth and grey eyes. He becomes a police officer when he is only 23 years old, and a...