
Sample of authors
Gaboriau, Émile
While Edgar Allan Poe, the American author of short stories, is generally considered to be the father of modern crime fiction, Émile Gaboriau has been cited as the father of the crime novel. He was the first to use at least four defining elements of the genre: 1) He wrote briefly and succinctly compared to his contemporaries and his novels are driven by the crime plot. 2) His protagonists are ...

Sample of authors
Grimes, Martha
Martha Grimes is an American author of detective stories born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father, a lawyer, died when she was six years old and she and her brother grew up with their mother, a busy businesswoman who managed the Mountain Lake Hotel in West Maryland. After leaving high school she attended the University of Maryland, College Park, graduating with a BA in English in 1954 and an...