Thomas Gifford Writer
Thomas Eugene Gifford (May 16, 1937 – October 31, 2000) was a best-selling American author of thriller novels. He was a graduate of Harvard University.He gained international fame with the crime novel The Glendower Legacy and later with the Vatican thriller The Assassini. The books posited George Washington as a British spy and the Roman Catholic Church as a criminal organization. The Glendower Legacy was made into a movie in 1981 under the name Dirty Tricks.Gifford also published under the names Dana Clarins and Thomas Maxwell.He died of cholangiocarcinoma in his home in Dubuque, Iowa, on Halloween 2000.