Photo: Paul McNicholls / Camera Press / TT (1979)
Sample of authors
Household, Geoffrey
Geoffrey Edward West Household grew up in Bristol where he attended Clifton College in 1914–19. He went on to study English at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1922. Immediately afterwards, he worked for a bank in Bucharest, Romania. In 1926, he moved to Spain where he sold bananas for a fruit company. In 1929, he went to the United States where he became a travelling salesman in printing i...
Literary figures
Karen Pirie
Gender: Female
She is an overweight workaholic, but also exceptionally skilful when it comes to investigating old, unsolved cases in police novels by Val McDermid. Karen Pirie is the head of the Historic Cases Unit with its head office in Fife in Scotland. Her private life is minimal – but includes a sweetheart, her colleague Phil Parhatka, and she mourns deeply when he is killed on duty. But she soon throws h...