Noel Behn(1928-1998)

Novelist, screenwriter, stage producer and raconteur. Best known for his novel "The Kremlin Letter", which drew on his experiences working for U.S. Army Counterintelligence. During the 1950s and '60s he was the producing director for the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. He also accounted for one-quarter of a distinguished intellectual foursome inhabiting the same 57th Street building (the others were Paddy Chayevsky, Bob Fosse and playwright Herb Gardner), forming an "unofficial club" and collaborating on each other's projects.

[on why he insisted that most so-called spy novels are really detective novels] In a detective novel, the hero solves a crime; in a spy novel, the hero commits one.