Thomas Gifford

Thomas Eugene Gifford (1937-2000) was a best-selling American author of thriller novels. He gained international fame with the suspense novel The Wind Chill Factor and later with the Vatican-based thriller The Assassini. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, he moved to Minnesota after graduating from Harvard. After eight years as a traveling textbook salesman, he wrote Benchwarmer Bob (1974), a biography of Minnesota Vikings defensive end Bob Lurtsema. The Wind Chill Factor (1975), a novel about dark dealings among ex-Nazis, introduced John Cooper, a character whom Gifford would revisit in The First Sacrifice (1994). Gifford was nominated for an Edgar Award for The Cavanaugh Quest (1976) and The Glendower Legacy (1978), a story about an academic who discovers that George Washington may have been a British spy. The novel was a success, and was adapted for into a film called Dirty Tricks (1981), starring Elliott Gould. In the 1980’s Gifford wrote suspense novels under the pen names Thomas Maxwell and Dana Clarins. In 1996 he moved back to Dubuque to renovate his childhood home. There he wrote a weekly column in the Telegraph Herald entitled "Jazzbo of Old Dubuque." He died of cancer in 2000.