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Portrait of John D. MacDonald Photo: Ray Fisher/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images (1977)

Sample of authors

MacDonald, John D.

The American author John Dann MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania. His father (who was of Scottish ancestry) pursued a career at the Savage Arms Corporation. When he was offered a promotion in 1926, the family moved to Utica, New York, where his son attended high school, graduating as late as in 1932 on account of a bout of scarlet fever in 1928-29. During his illness, MacDonald read...

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Literary figures

Mac

Gender: Male

After a childhood in Chicago’s slum district, Mac – which is the only name he is given in Thomas B. Dewey’s hard-boiled novels – becomes a police officer in that same city. However, he solved a crime that gangster bosses and corrupt powerful figures did not want solving, so he was sacked. Now he is a private detective, but still had friends in the police department. He is a skilled investigator, h...

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