Photo: Matthew Peyton / Getty Images Entertainment (2003)
Sample of authors
Hoch, Edward D.
The American crime writer Edward D. (Dentinger) Hoch was unique in the sense that he appears to be the only American crime writer who has managed to make a living for decades from his short stories alone. Although he mainly wrote whodunits with elements of the occult, his whole body of work can be divided into a number of different genres.
Ed Hoch was born in Rochester, New York, where he...
Literary figures
Bertha Cool
Gender: Female
Cool is a sturdy woman in her sixties who runs a private detective agency on the fringes of the law. She is a hardboiled lady who smokes, drinks and swears, so she caused some attention when the books about her were launched in the 1930s by A. A. Fair (a pen name used by Erle Stanley Gardner). Her trusted helper is a wiry, sly lawyer called Donald Lam.