Leslie Charteris Biography

American writer, born as Leslie Charles Bowyer Lin in Singapore and educated in England; he lived in the USA from 1935, working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and becoming a US citizen in 1946. He was the author of a long series of novels and short stories, beginning with Meet the Tiger (1928), in which the hero is the immaculately dressed English young man about town Simon Templar, known as the Saint, a modern-day Robin Hood who rights injustice and succours the oppressed while evading the police. Later novels are often set in the USA, including The Saint in Miami (1940). A number of films, in most of which George Sanders took the leading role, several television and a radio series have depicted Templar's adventures.