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Sample of authors
Macdonald, Ross
Ross Macdonald is a pseudonym for the American-Canadian crime writer Kenneth Millar. He was born in Los Gatos, California, but he grew up in his parents’ native Canada. His parents divorced shortly after the family moved there, and during childhood Macdonald constantly changed homes, living with his mother who was in poor health. He later wrote that he had figured out that he, up until the age o...
Literary figures
Max Van Larsen
Gender: Male
A depressed, middle-aged detective with a guilty conscience who works in the New York police section for missing persons. Max Van Larsen’s wife and 13-year-old son have died in a traffic accident, and he discovers that he has not known them well enough to be able to mourn them. He is, however, consoled when he meets the cheerful author Sylvia Plotkin, and together they solve the weird cases in t...