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Summary
Author Notes
Craig Thomas was born in Cardiff, England in 1942, and was educated at Cardiff High School and University College, Cardiff. After completing his MA on Thomas Hardy, he went into teaching. Throughout his eleven years teaching English, Thomas longed to go into writing.
At first he began to write only occasionally, producing a number of scripts for radio and TV, all of which were rejected. Eventually, after pleading with a script editor for some advice, he was told he could write, but not for radio. The script editor told him to attempt to write a novel. Thomas just happened to have an idea for a thriller which he has wanted to try as a radio serial. Instead, he turned it into a novel after eighteen months. The manuscript became Rat Trap, Thomas' first published novel.
But it was Thomas' second novel, Firefox, which made him a best-seller both in England and the U.S., and enabled him to become a professional novelist. An American paperback house paid a significant sum for the book, and Clint Eastwood turned it into a movie. It was the first techno-thriller and the first action story to be set mainly in the Soviet Union. Thomas left teaching in 1977, having already completed his third novel, Wolfsbane. However, it was with his fourth novel, Snow Falcon, that Thomas claims he found his own voice.
Thomas' subsequent books, including The Bears Tears, Winter Hawk, All the Grey Cats, The Last Raven and A Hooded Crow, all spring from his interest in "speculations" on geopolitical tensions and conflicts. His fourteen best-selling novels have consistently attracted praise and he is generally credited with creating the genre of the 'techno-thriller' with his novel Firefox.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Clever, clever Sir Kenneth Aubrey and tough, tough Patrick Hyde (The Last Raven, Wildcat, etc.) are again Britain's last defense against intense international embarrassment. This time out, they're up against Russia, South Africa, and--most dangerous of all--politics. Older, weaker, and out of the loop, Sir Kenneth is at first unavailable to the little collection of British intelligence specialists who, against orders from above, have nosed around the principals and products of Reid Davies, a high-tech manufacturing firm. Reid Davies's founder is a Thatcherian highflier who has been elevated to the top levels of government, where he is being groomed for Even Better Things. The nosy boys are onto something bigger than they can handle. Some very important Russians have a very long secret electronic-gadget shopping list: They want all the high-tech toys they can get from Reid Davies, and they want them now--even if it means endangering the industrial espionage network established by Sir Andrew Babbington, late of H.M. intelligence, now of the KGB. Even when bodies start to drop in central London, the brainless twits who have banished Sir Kenneth can't see that there is any danger. But Aubrey receives a note from, of all places, Namibia, that spurs the old cold warrior into action, including trips to Venice and Johannesburg. The younger, fitter, less cerebral Patrick Hyde does all the climbing and heavy lifting with a lot of panache. He's kept awfully busy heading off a shipment of nerve gas ordered by nasty South African white supremacists from new Eastern bloc capitalists who used to be plain old thugs. Much faster-moving and less thoughtful than the grand old spy stuff, but then so is England. The New World Disorder is nearly as entertaining as the old mess.
Booklist Review
The cold war may be pretty much over, but not in the best-selling novels of Craig Thomas. In his latest, Thomas brings back master spy Sir Kenneth Aubrey from a previous work. Aubrey's mission is to track down certain devious enemies of democracy and stop them from smuggling the secrets of Western high-tech military hardware to the Russians. Aubrey, along with good guys Patrick Hyde and Tony Godwin, begin their quest in Africa, where they will once again confront the nefarious South African businessman Paulus Malan and his brutal henchman Blantyre. Like Thomas' other novels, this one is filled with adventure and violence--to say nothing of dead bodies, knives, guns of all sizes, deadly scorpions, man-eating leopards, and torture. All this adds up to another chart-topper by this master of suspense. (Reviewed Dec. 15, 1991)0060179546George Cohen