Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (1978)
Sample of authors
Bagley, Desmond
British author of thrillers born in Kendal, Cumbria (formerly Westmorland), in northwest England, an area known as the Lake District. His father was a miner who became ill and moved his family to Blackpool when Bagley was about twelve years old. There he ran a boarding house for actors. Desmond Bagley, who suffered from a bad stutter, left school when he was fourteen and worked in odd jobs at a...
Literary figures
Mike (Michael) Padillo
Gender: Male
After the Second World War, he was forced (through blackmail) to become a spy and executioner for an extremely secret American secret service. But he is also the part-owner, together with ‘Mac’ McCorkle, of a bar in Bonn. Michael (Mike) Padillo is half Estonian, half Spanish, and would like to live a life in calm and peace, but in a suite of novels by Ross Thomas he is obliged to undertake sev...