Trevanian

Rodney William Whitaker was an American film scholar and writer who wrote several successful novels under the pen name Trevanian. Whitaker wrote in a wide variety of genres, achieved best-seller status, and published under several other names as well, including Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot and Edoard Moran. He published the non-fiction The Language of Film under his own name.
Between 1972 and 1983, five of his novels sold more than a million copies each. He was described as "the only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe and Chaucer." He revealed his real name in an interview with the New York Times in 1979.