Peter O’Donnell was born in 1920 and sold his first story at the age of 16. Drunk with success, he sobered up when he failed to sell another for two years. On leaving school, he worked for a magazine publishing company producing comics. Convinced the work was beneath his dignity, he soon had this notion knocked out of him by the discovery that it called for endless invention and clear, simple writing. In the years following the war he wrote prolifically—stories, series, serials for juvenile and women’s magazines, but found himself increasingly engaged in scripting for strip cartoons like “Garth” and “Tug Transom.” He devised “Modesty Blaise” in 1962, and had immediate international success, both with the strip cartoon and with the novels. He has written scripts for BBC Television and for Hammer Films, and is fascinated by the different problems posed by different media in the telling of a story. It was this which attracted him to tackle yet another medium, one with problems he had not encountered before—the play for the stage. The result is MR FOTHERGILL’S MURDER.
