A founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of Britain, he was
the legal adviser of
Raymond Chandler at one time and drew up his will. A
soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery in World War II, he was captured
in North Africa and imprisoned in Tunis and in Italy, experiences which
he drew on for his escape story "Death in Captivity" (1952). He has
been called one of the finest of the post-WWII generation of detective
writers.