David Dodge (novelist)

His travel writing documented the adventures and misadventures of the Dodge family (David, his wife Elva and daughter Kendal) as they roamed around the world.

David Dodge's first experience as a writer came through his involvement with the Macondray Lane Players, a group of amateur playwrights, producers, and actors whose goal was to create a theater purely for pleasure.

His career as a writer really began, however, when he made a bet with his wife that he could write a better mystery novel than the ones they were reading during a rainy family vacation.

With its subject matter and extremely evocative cover art on both the first edition dust jacket and the paperback reprint, this book remains one of Dodge's most collectible titles.

Upon his release from active duty by the Navy in 1945, Dodge left San Francisco and set out for Guatemala by car with his wife and daughter, beginning his second career as a travel writer.

His Latin American experiences also produced a second series character, expatriate private investigator and tough-guy adventurer Al Colby, who first appears in The Long Escape (Random House, 1948).

After two more well-received Colby books in 1949 and 1950, Dodge abandoned series characters and focused on stand-alone suspense adventures set in exotic locales around the world; To Catch a Thief was Dodge's greatest career success, primarily due to the fact the Alfred Hitchcock purchased film rights before the novel was even published in 1952 and turned it into the 1955 Paramount film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

The Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, a "tipsheet for nickel-nursers and skinflints" appeared in 1953 and was so successful that Random House issued annual revised editions from 1954 to 1959.