Photo: Sasha/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (1934)
Sample of authors
Tey, Josephine
Josephine Tey (the author of popular mystery novels) and Gordon Daviot (a well-known English playwright between 1933 and 1952) were one and the same: the pseudonyms of the reserved, at times even diffident, Scottish author Elizabeth Mackintosh. Little is known about her life; not even the year of her birth can be determined exactly. It was previously believed that she was born in 1897, but it...
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...