James Hadley Chase
James Hadley Chase ( born December 26, 1906 in London, † 6 February 1985 in Corseaux, Canton of Vaud, really René Brabazon Raymond ) was a British thriller writer.
Life
Chase was born as the son of an army officer. He was educated at King's School, Rochester, Kent. At eighteen, he went away from home and worked in different jobs. In 1938, he was influenced by his reading of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, and wrote a few weeks the thriller novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The 1939 published book became a bestseller. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force and rose to the squadron leader.
Throughout his life James Hadley Chase wrote 96 more novels. Most of them are fast-paced gangster stories set in the United States. The knowledge about the United States lent itself to James Hadley Chase by reading non-fiction books about the country and visited only on two occasions Miami and New Orleans. Very many of the novels of James Hadley Chase were filmed.
He was married over fifty years with his wife Sylvia, with whom he had a son.