E. P. THORNE

His full name was Ernest Pollett Thorne and though he did use it a couple of times on his books, he preferred to go by his initials.

I found little or no information about him per se but the fact that the first few books published by him dealt with India, it is reasonable to deduce he spent a fair amount of time in that region and was fascinated enough with it to use it as the backdrop on more than one occasion.

His first foray into the spy fiction was 'Three Silent Men' dealing with the mysterious death of a foreign scientist visiting England to sell it a secret weapon. The book came out in 1939 and was immediately optioned and turned into a movie of the same name in 1940.

He would go another half decade without any known output but then start a string of spy adventures about 'Brains' Cunningham, producing ten in the next decade.

As he entered his 60s, Thorne created a new character, Quentin Eady, who appears to be an academician who uses logic to solve crimes; the half dozen he would put out over the next decade were marked as "Q.E.D." thrillers.