Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (2006)
Sample of authors
Westlake, Donald E.
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American author of Irish descent born in Brooklyn, New York. As a small boy, he moved with his family to Yonkers and later to Albany, New York, where he grew up. He enrolled at the State University of New York, Pittsburgh, in 1949, but dropped out the following year. He attempted to study at two more universities, but only for short periods.
Westlake had a couple of...
Literary figures
Arlette van der Valk
Gender: Female
When she was young, she was called Davidson, but the changed her surname after marrying Detective Superintendent Piet Van der Valk in Amsterdam. She is a temperamental, intelligent master-chef and music lover, a minor character in most of the novels about her husband. When he is murdered, Arlette Van der Valk exposes the perpetrator, and then continues as a private detective to solve cases on...