The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in Dorset where the author spent his youth. It was first published as a weekly serialisation from January 1886. The novel is considered to be one of the Hardy's masterpieces, although it has been criticised for incorporating too many incidents: a consequence of the author trying to include something in every weekly published instalment.
Alan Hunter (author) differs markedly from the books, being set in Northumberland and Durham rather than in Norfolk, and with different characters (other than the eponymous Gently). Alan Hunter (author) Alan Hunter (25 June 1922 – 26 February 2005) was an English author of crime fiction. All of his 46 novels feature Inspector George Gently and are mainly set in East Anglia. Initially a farmer, he became an antiquarian bookseller before writing his first novel. Hunter was born at Hoveton, Norfolk and went to school across the River Bure in Wroxham. He left school at 14 and worked on his father's farm near