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Portrait of Jean-Patrick Manchette Photo: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (1979)

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Manchette, Jean-Patrick

Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French author credited for having revolutionised noir fiction in France. He was born in Marseille. In 1945, the family moved to Malakoff in the Paris area. In 1960, after finishing his upper-secondary education, he moved to Paris where he spent most of his life and where he read English at the Sorbonne.
Manchette joined the militant left during the Algerian War of...

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Portrait image of Freeman Wills Crofts Photo: Hulton Deutsch / Corbis Historical via Getty Images (1952)

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Crofts, Freeman Wills

Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin, Ireland, as the son of a British army surgeon who died when Croft was still young. Because his mother then married an archdeacon, Croft was brought up in a deeply religious home. He studied engineering, and at the age of seventeen he became an apprentice at the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway where he stayed until 1929 when he left for health...

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