He is mostly remembered for his work on ITC classic TV series The Saint,[1] as well as several films of the franchise, and as the author of the best-selling novel Red Omega.
His father, Jack Frederick Conrad Kruse, was a captain in the Royal Navy and close associate of tycoon Lord Rothermere, founder of the Daily Mail.
He joined Pinewood Film Studios as a clapper boy and, during the next seven years, progressed to become cameraman, at the same time working nights to perfect his writing.
Starting in the 1960s, he also wrote many hundreds of episodes for British and international TV shows, including The Avengers, Shoestring, Colditz, The Persuaders!, and most famously The Saint, starring Roger Moore.
The first one, Red Omega (1981), became a best-seller—a Cold War spy thriller involving a CIA plot to murder Stalin using a rogue agent from Extremadura who survived the gulags.