Book description
Eve: mysterious, tantalizing, alluring, wanton. Deep within this
desirable but strange girl burns the violent fires that could destroy a man.
Clive Thurston had swindled his way to fame. He thought he knew the
ropes and women. Maybe he did. But he didn't know Eve, otherwise he'd
have realized that he was just another fly stumbling into the deadly web
of a woman who was beautiful to look at, but lethal to love. Born René
Brabazon Raymond in London, the son of a British colonel in the Indian
Army, James Hadley Chase was educated at King's School in Rochester,
Kent, and left home at the age of 18. He initially worked in book sales
until, inspired by the rise of gangster culture during the Depression
and by reading James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice
, he wrote his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish
. Despite the American setting of many of his novels, Chase (like Peter
Cheyney, another hugely successful British noir writer) never lived
there, writing with the aid of maps and a slang dictionary. He had
phenomenal success with the novel, which continued unabated throughout
his entire career, spanning 45 years and nearly 90 novels. His work was
published in dozens of languages and over thirty titles were adapted for
film. He served in the RAF during World War II, where he also edited the
RAF Journal. In 1956 he moved to France with his wife and son; they
later moved to Switzerland, where Chase lived until his death in 1985.
