Anniversaries, 11 April
Liza Cody
Pseudonym for Liza Nassim, English crime fiction writer, born in London where she grew up. She had problems in school – it later transpired that she suffered from dyslexia, and so she put her efforts into an artistic career. She studied at the City and Guilds of London Art School and the Royal Academy School of Art in London. For a while, she worked as a visual artist, but with little success, so she took a row of temporary jobs. She has worked as a graphic designer, furniture designer, studio t...
Anniversaries, 11 April
Peter O'Donnell
Peter O’Donnell was a British author born in Lewisham, London, to an Irish family. His father was a well-known crime reporter. O’Donnell attended Catford Central School in London, but he soon dropped out and began to write for youth magazines. In 1936, at the age of sixteen, he was employed to write comic strips.
He was drafted in 1938. During the first few years of his military service he was stationed in the UK, and in 1940 he was able to marry his girlfriend, Constance Green. They remained m...
Anniversaries, 11 April
Thomas Harris
American author who has become known for his thrillers with their atmosphere of horror about the doctor, psychopath and cannibal Hannibal Lector; all of them were bestsellers and have been turned into films. Thomas Harris was born in Jackson, Tennessee, but already when he was a child the family moved to his father’s home district in Rich, Mississippi. His father worked on a farm and the son had more contact with his mother who was a teacher and encouraged his interest in reading. When he was a...
Photo: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images (1955)
Sample of authors
Carr, John Dickson
American author of detective stories born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His father was a criminal lawyer and politician who possessed a comprehensive collection of detective stories, so John Dickson Carr read books by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton from an early age. He soon decided he wanted to write his own stories, and made some of his first attempts while he...