Photo: Bettmann / Getty Images
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
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...