Desmond Skirrow

Desmond Skirrow (1923–1976) was a British advertising executive and thriller writer. In the late 1960s he wrote three outstanding spy novels about a fictional British agent named John Brock. Like his creator, Brock works in advertising in London, but is also a part-time agent for an undercover department run by The Fat Man. The three novels, It Won't Get You Anywhere, I Was Following This Girl, and I'm Trying to Give It Up, are tough, irreverent, and witty. Punch called them "the Chandler formula, basically, but louder and funnier."