title: Thomas Gifford
text: # Thomas Gifford
  
  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.
  
  