Writing as Robert Rostand, novelist and screen writer Robert Syd Hopkins is the author of a dozen books, three non-fiction works and nine novels under his own name and the pseudonym Rostand ? including The Killer Elite, the first of the Locken trilogy of hardedged, Cold War-era thrillers and the soon-to-be republished Viper's Game and A Killing in Rome. All featuring specialist in security and transport (and magnet for nasty people), Mike Locken. Hopkins has worked for the U.S. government, and lived long periods in Brazil, England, Canada and France. His books have been translated into eleven languages.