The Scottish author Alistair Stuart MacLean was born in Shettleston, Glasgow, in a Gaelic-speaking family as Alasdair MacGill-Eain (his Gaelic name was anglicised by the British authorities). His father was a Church of Scotland minister. While the author was still a baby, the family moved to a farm near Daviot in the Highlands. After the death of his father, his mother returned to Glasgow with...

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The Scottish crime writer Ian James Rankin was born in the coal mining town of Cardenden, Fife, where his father owned a grocery store. His mother worked in a school canteen. There were few books at home, and Rankin began to visit his local library as a child and began to write short stories as a teenager. He attended Denend Primary School in Cardendan and later Auchterderran Junior High at...

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Pierre Boileau was one half of the partnership (and the brand) Boileau-Narcejac, which can best be described as French crime writing institution. The other half was Pierre Ayraud (writing under the pseudonym Thomas Narcejac). Both authors wrote detective novels both independently and together, many of which were made into popular films. They were also prominent figures on the French literary...

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Lois Duncan Steinmetz was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the daughter of Joseph Steinmetz and his wife Lois Duncan, both of them well-known photographers. The family moved to Sarasota, Florida, where Lois grew up and graduated from high school in 1952. By that time, she was already an established writer who published her work in magazines. She began to write when she was ten, and she...

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