Photo: Keith Beaty/Toronto Star via Getty Images (1982)
Sample of authors
Allbeury, Ted
The British author of espionage fiction Theodore Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury was born in Stockport, Cheshire. His father was an army officer who was killed a few days before the end of the First World War. His mother moved with her two children first to Essex and later to Allbeury’s paternal grandparents in Birmingham where he first attended the Slade Primary School at Erdington and later the K...
Literary figures
Merlini
Gender: Male
His first name is never mentioned, but as a stage magician he is known as The Great Merlini. He is a former circus artiste, but when we meet him in Clayton Rawson’s detective story, Merlini is running a store for magic supplies in Times Square in New York and solving inexplicable murders – so-called impossible crimes. He doesn’t like the subway, beer, opera, golf and sleep, but loves surfing, tabl...