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Portrait image of Colin Dexter Photo: Ulla Montan

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Dexter, Colin

The British crime writer Colin Dexter grew up in Stamford, Lincolnshire. After completing his military service in 1950, he read classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1953 and receiving an honorary masters degree in 1958. Dexter was a grammar school teacher until 1966, when he started to experience problems with his hearing. He then worked for the University of Oxford Examination...

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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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