Peter O'Donnell was an English author, best known for his action-adventure, spy, and mystery novels, as well as his comic strips. He was born on April 11, 1920, in Lewisham, London, and started writing professionally at the age of sixteen. O'Donnell's writing career was put on hold during World War II, where he served as an NCO in the British army's mobile radio detachment of the Royal Corps in the eighth army. He saw active duty in Persia in 1942, was moved to Syria, Egypt, the Western Desert, and Italy, and was with the forces that went into Greece in October of 1944.
After the war, O'Donnell resumed his writing career and began his 38-year run as the writer of the Modesty Blaise adventure story strip in 1963. The strip, which appeared six days a week in English and Scottish newspapers, was syndicated in more than 42 countries. O'Donnell's work on the Modesty Blaise strip led to a series of bestselling novels, all published by Souvenir Press. These novels, which include "Modesty Blaise," "Sabre Tooth," "I, Lucifer," "The Impossible Virgin," "Pieces of Modesty," "A Taste for Death," "The Silver Mistress," "Dragon’s Claw," "The Xanadu Talisman," "The Night of the Morningstar," "Dead Man’s Handle," and "Cobra Trap," are not related to the strip stories; they are entirely new, though the characters and "lives" are the same.
In addition to his work as Peter O'Donnell, the author also wrote gothic historical romance novels under the pen name of Madeleine Brent. He retired from writing in 2001 and passed away in 2010. O'Donnell had requested that no one write the Modesty Blaise character after his passing, in accordance with his wishes.