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Craig Thomas

Craig Thomas was born in Cardiff, England in 1942, and was educated at Cardiff High School and University College, Cardiff. After completing his MA on Thomas Hardy, he went into teaching. Throughout his eleven years teaching English, Thomas longed to go into writing. At first he began to write only occasionally, producing a number of scripts for radio and TV, all of which were rejected. Eventually, after pleading with a script editor for some advice, he was told he could write, but not for radio. The script editor told him to attempt to write a novel. Thomas just happened to have an idea for a thriller which he has wanted to try as a radio serial. Instead, he turned it into a novel after eighteen months. The manuscript became Rat Trap, Thomas' first published novel. But it was Thomas' second novel, Firefox, which made him a best-seller both in England and the U.S., and enabled him to become a professional novelist. An American paperback house paid a significant sum for the book, and Clint Eastwood turned it into a movie. It was the first techno-thriller and the first action story to be set mainly in the Soviet Union. Thomas left teaching in 1977, having already completed his third novel, Wolfsbane. However, it was with his fourth novel, Snow Falcon, that Thomas claims he found his own voice. Thomas' subsequent books, including The Bears Tears, Winter Hawk, All the Grey Cats, The Last Raven and A Hooded Crow, all spring from his interest in "speculations" on geopolitical tensions and conflicts. His fourteen best-selling novels have consistently attracted praise and he is generally credited with creating the genre of the 'techno-thriller' with his novel Firefox. 030