[3] Born on 24 December 1906 in London, England, he was the son of Colonel Francis Raymond of the colonial Indian Army, a veterinary surgeon.

He edited the RAF journal with David Langdon and had several stories from it published after the war in the book Slipstream: A Royal Air Force Anthology.

Prohibition and the ensuing Great Depression in the US (1929–39) had given rise to the Chicago gangster culture prior to World War II.

[5][6] Chase and Robert Nesbitt adapted it to a stage play of the same name which ran in London's West End to good reviews.

During the war, Raymond edited the RAF's official magazine and from that period comes Chase's short story "The Mirror in Room 22", in which he tried his hand outside the crime genre.

The owner of the house had committed suicide in his bedroom, and the last two occupants of the room had been found with a razor in their hands and their throats cut.

This gave Chase the background for his early books with American settings, a number of which were based on actual events occurring there.

Over the years, Chase developed a distinct, signature style in his writing that was fast-paced, with little explanations or details about the surroundings or weather, unreliable characters.

By the end of World War II, eleven Chase titles had been published and he decided to adopt a different writing approach.

All of his books to date had been compared to each other, and he wanted to move away from the American gangster scene to the London underworld that had sprung up following the end of German hostilities.

Alerted to Grant's new book, Greene gave it high praise as did the critics who, at the time, had no idea that Chase was the author.

In the early 1960s, both men were caught up in an investment scandal involving Tom Roe which was to lead to Greene's tax exile beginning in 1966.

Set in America, the film version was moved to Venice and starred Stanley Baker as a Welsh writer obsessed with a cold-hearted femme fatale, Eve (Jeanne Moreau).

His early books contained some violence that matched the era in which they were written, though this was considerably toned down as plots centred more on circumstantial situations to create the high degree of tension that was the hallmark of his writing.

Chase's best market was France (more than 30 books were made into movies) where all of his ninety titles were published by Éditions Gallimard in their Série noire series.

Carol Miss Wonderly, Killeano, Fleggerty||I'll Get You for This (1951) More Deadly than the Male|| ||The Last Page (aka) Man Bait (1952) Della Hellen Harmas Maddux || Morilli Bullet (1976)Palmetto (1998) Ticky Edris Phil Algir||Trop petit mon ami (fr) (1970) Susan Putch ||