Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex (2023)
Sample of authors
Oates, Joyce Carol
American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...
Theme article
History of crime fiction
By: Johan Wopenka
Literary figures
Henri Bencolin
Gender: Male
Bencolin is a sardonic gentleman, with a high position in the Paris police force and is described as a ‘Mephistopheles smoking a cigar’. Little is known about his background and private life, but he is described as rather unfeeling, even cruel, and lives entirely for solving what are called ‘impossible crimes’ in John Dickson Carr’s earliest novels with elements of horror. On occasion, Bencolin is...