Background
James Hadley Chase was born in London, England in 1906 as the son of an army officer Colonel Francis Raymond. He was educated at King's School Rochester (Kent). He was at first headed for a scientific career. Preparing a diploma of bacteriology, he went to Calcutta for a specific study on hydrophobia. His father had founded the Raymond Research Laboratory and had been the principle of Bengal Veterinary College until 1912.
He refused a position of a bank clerk and started out selling Arthur Mee's Children Encyclopaedia because he preferred a world of books. He said that in two years he knocked 100,000 doors. This period of his life will be reflected in the novel "More Deadly than the Male", written in 1946, his main character, George Fraser, is selling the Child's Self-Educator in London suburbs, so we are given an intensive course in salesmanship... with all the tricks of this door to door job.
In 1933 he married Sylvia Ray, who gave him a son. His first successful book is called "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" (1939). He wrote this book after reading James M. Can's novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice". He also read a story of Ma Baker and her gang. And after that the writer decided that crime fiction offered some real possibilities. "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" was written using an American slang dictionary and maps in a period of six weekends.
During the Second World War René Raymond served in the Royal Air Force. He was commissioned into the Administrative and Special Duties Branch with the rank of Pilot Officer on 26 June 1941. On 26 June 1942 he was promoted to Flying Officer, on 8 October 1943 to Flight Lieutenant and finally Squadron leader in 1944. Between November 1941 until the end of 1945, at the head of the Branch P9 of the Directorate of Personal Services, he was, among other duties, the editor of the Royal Air Force Journal, a biweekly publication.
Just after the war, in 1946, René Raymond and his war comrade David Langdon, another squadron leader, edited Slipstream (A Royal Air Force Anthology), the profit from the sales going to the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund. Slipstream is a collection of short stories from the R.A.F. Journal, among them "The mirror of room 22" written by René Raymond.
Clive Richards from the Ministry Of Defence, Air Historical Branch, indicates that in the first issue of the R.A.F. journal there is an article, "R.A.F. in Iceland" by R. B. R., which must belong to René Brabazon Raymond.
At the age of twenty he joined the biggest book wholesalers in Britain, kept his finger on the public pulse, worked out for himself what it was they wanted in fiction - and, one day, at the age of thirty three, he came up with "No orchids for Miss Blandish", which he wrote in six weekends.
In 1969 he moved to Switzerland, living a secluded life in Corseaux-sur-Vive on Lake geneva. James Hadley Chase died on February 6 1985.