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Portrait image of James Patterson James Pattersno 2010
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Patterson, James

The American author, James Patterson, was born and grew up in Newburgh in the State of New York. His father was an insurance clerk and his mother a teacher. After state schooling, he studied at Manhattan College in the Bronx, New York, and took his B.A in 1969. He started at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and got his M.A in English in 1970. He then dropped his studies, moved back...

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Literary figures

Virgil Tibbs

Gender: Male

Since he is an Afro-American, he is arrested as a murder suspect in a little town in Mississippi by a racist sheriff – but he can identify himself as a police detective from Pasadena in California. Despite opposition from the town’s inhabitants, he helps the local police to solve the case. The sophisticated, low-key bachelor Virgil Tibbs returns later in a further half-dozen detective stories by J...

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