Leslie Charteris

Leslie Charteris (born May 12, 1907 in Singapore as Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin , † April 15, 1993 in Windsor , England) was a British-American crime writer.

Life

He was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin in what was then the British crown colony of Singapore. His father was a respected Chinese doctor and his mother English. Even at the private schools he attended, he was involved in the school newspapers and at 17 he sold his first story. After school, he officially changed his name to “Charteris”. He began to study law in Cambridge, which he broke off when his first major publications " X Esquire " (1927) and "Encounters with the Tiger" (1928) were successful. But the return of Bill Kennedy from his first novel and also the following two novels could not build on it at first. It was the hero from "Encounters with the Tiger" who should make him famous:Simon Templar , called the Saint (because of the initials ST). Templar is a thief and burglar who chooses his victims in Robin Hood fashion from those who deserve to be robbed.

In 1930 two novels and six stories with the saint appeared and until the 1960s, with the exception of a few short stories, he wrote only adventures with Simon Templar. In 1932 he moved, like many British authors, to the United States and finally to Hollywood, where he tried his hand at writing a screenplay. He also wrote radio plays for a Sherlock Holmes series, which was spoken by the famous film duo Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce . When his Saint adventures were filmed in the late 1930s, he also contributed a few scripts himself.

In 1942, after having been unable to do so for a long time because of his Asian descent, he acquired US citizenship. After the war he left Hollywood and became editor of Suspense magazine . Later, from 1953 to 1967, he edited "The Saint Mystery Magazine". In 1963 his last own Simon Templar stories were published, from 1964 other authors took over the continuation of the series; Only in two novels in the early 1970s did he work again with Fleming Lee, who, like him, was a member of Mensa , an association of highly gifted people with a particularly high IQ .

The British Crime Writers' Association (CWA) honored him in 1992 with the Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award , their highest honor, for his life's work in criminal literature.

In addition to the crime novels, he also had a few other interests that were reflected in publications. At times he wrote articles for “Gourmet Magazine”, published a book on Spanish grammar and translated a book on bullfighting. In 1972 his last publication was a book on the universal sign language Paleneo, which he had invented. He then retired and lived in England and France until his death in 1993.

Charteris was married to the actress Audrey Long (1922-2014) in their fourth marriage from 1952 until his death .

Works

Simon Templar

• look there

Others (selection)

• X Esquire (1927)
• The White Rider (1928)
• The Bandit (1929)
• Daredevil (1929)
• Spanish for Fun (1964)
• Paleneo: A Universal Sign Language (1972)

translation

• Juan Belmonte, Killer of Bulls; The Autobiography of a Matador (1937)

Scripts (each with different)

• Midnight Club (1933)
• Die Dame im Zug ( Lady on a Train , 1945) (script source)
• River Gang (1945)
• Tarzan is hunted ( Tarzan and the Huntress , 1947)

Web links

• Literature by and about Leslie Charteris in the catalog of the German National Library
• Leslie Charteris in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Biography ( memento of November 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
• complete bibliography (Engl.)
• List of works by Leslie Charteris that have been translated into German