Readers of mystery and thriller fiction can be extremely loyal and publishers, knowing this, sometimes arrange to bring fictional characters back to life after the deaths of their creators. For instance, Ian Fleming's famous Agent 007, James Bond, has been revived by Kingsley Amis and Jefferey Deaver.
Trevanian, nom de plume of Rodney William Whitaker (1931-2005), was an American film scholar and wonderfully versatile writer who could do everything from spy spoofs ("The Eiger Sanction") to gritty frontier stories ("Incident at Twenty Mile").
His 1979 best-seller, "Shibumi" (meaning quiet, severe taste), introduced Nicholai Hel, a stateless Russian emigre who had been taken under the wing of a Japanese general and molded into a coldblooded killing machine.