Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (1994)
Sample of authors
Hill, Susan
Susan Hill is a British author. In 1961, she published the first of the over 50 works she has produced over her fifty-year-long career. Hill grew up in Scarborough, Yorkshire. As a child she enjoyed drama and reading. When she was sixteen, the family moved to Coventry where she attended Garr’s Hill girls’ grammar school. She went on to study at King’s College, London, graduating with a BA in Engli...
Literary figures
Piet van der Valk
Gender: Male
An independent, eccentric and short-tempered detective superintendent with the police in Amsterdam, the main character in a suite of police novels by Englishman Nicolas Freeling. Piet van der Valk is arrogant, but also critical of society and empathetic. He is married to Arlette with whom he has two sons and an adopted daughter. He is killed during an investigation, and his wife takes over the...