John Kruse

JOHN KRUSE (1921-2004) was born in England and educated at Harrow. He served as an infantry officer in the Middle East and Italy throughout World War II, after which he returned to England to begin a career from scratch at age twenty-six. He joined London Films as a clapper boy and, during the next seven years, progressed to become cameraman, working on most of the big movies of the period, filling in with stints as truck driver, builder, photographer and artist, at the same time working nights to perfect his writing. His short stories began to appear in top magazines on both sides of the Atlantic in the early fifties; several were made into movies. Since 1954, when he switched to full-time scriptwriting, Mr. Kruse has written many hundreds of episodes for British and international TV series, plus a dozen or so movies. Between these projects and dragging his wife and son on spearfishing trips around the world, building his own house, photographing and landscape-painting, he never found time to write a novel until his first book, Red Omega, was published in 1981. This was the first of three published books which also include Long Live the Dead — a sequel to Red Omega — and Hour of the Lily, an epic story of love and war in Russian-occupied Afghanistan.