Rupert Croft-Cooke, who wrote his best-known detective novels under the pseudonym Leo Bruce, was born in Edenbridge, Kent, to Hubert Bruce Cooke and Lucy Taylor Cooke. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent and Wellington College (now Wrekin College) before studying at the University of Buenos Aires in 1923-1926. While living in Buenos Aires, Croft-Cooke founded a weekly, La Estrella, and edited it in 1923-1924. He worked as an antiquarian bookseller in 1929-1931 and lectured at the English Institute Montana, Zugerberg, Switzerland, in 1931. In 1940 he entered the British intelligence corps, and two years later he served with distinction in the Madagascar campaign, earning the British Empire Medal. He was given command of the Third (Queen Alexandra's Own) Gurka Rifles in 1943 and in 1944 became a captain and field security officer for the Poona District. An instructor at the British intelligence school in Karachi in 1945, he was field security officer for...