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Leslie Charteris

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Leslie Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin in Singapore, the son of a Chinese physician father and an English mother. He started writing in childhood, creating his own magazine with articles, short stories, poetry, editorials, serials, comic strip. In 1926, he legally changed his last name to Charteris. He wrote his first book, X Esquire (1927), as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. When it was accepted for publication, he left university to became a professional writer. He continued to write thrillers while supporting himself by working odd jobs, including as laborer on a freighter, bartender in a country inn, gold prospector, pearl fisher, tin miner, laborer on a rubber plantation, carnival hand, and bus driver. He was most famous for his series of books featuring detective Simon Templar, known as The Saint. Charteris moved to the United States in 1932 and started writing screenplays for Paramount Pictures in addition to his other fiction. In the 1940s he also wrote for the Sherlock Holmes radio series. In 1952 he married Hollywood actress Audrey Long. In 1961, Charteris sold the television rights to The Saint series to ITC and a successful television show was produced starring Roger Moore. Initially the episodes were based on Charteris' stories, but later original scripts were commissioned from other authors. These scripts were novelised and published under Charteris' name but were in fact written by others. Charteris stopped writing the Saint books after The Saint in the Sun (1963), although he did collaborate on several in the 1970s. The series went on to total nearly 100 books. Charteris appears to have been an editor for the Saint books after he stopped writing them, and he also edited and wrote for The Saint Mystery Magazine. Leslie Charteris died at Windsor, Berkshire.