Havank

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Havank, Dutch writer, journalist and translator, born Leeuwarden, February 19, 1904 – died Leeuwarden, June 22, 1964.

Havank was the pen-name of H.F. (Hans) van der Kallen, who wrote 30 very popular crime-novels and stories, featuring French police officers Bruno Silvère and Charles C.M. Carlier, the latter better known in Dutch as 'de Schaduw’ ( the Shadow), as their main characters. Furthermore he translated some 45 novels, mainly of fellow crime writers such as Leslie Charteris, Raymond Chandler and E. Phillips Oppenheim. Most of his books were since the mid 1950s published as pocketbooks with covers designed by the illustrator Dick Bruna and he is estimated to have sold more than 6 million copies in his lifetime. Only two of his own books were translated: into German. Other translations are as yet not known.
During the World War II years Havank worked on the editorial staff of the London edition of the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland, occasionally as a war correspondent. Shortly after the war he was invited to ghost-write the memoirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto, the original spycatcher. These (ghostwritten) memoirs were serialized in the News Chronicle. In 1946 he married Willesden born Cynthia Vickers, at the time of their first meeting a Red Cross ambulance driver.
Havank lived most of his life abroad, in the south of France, on Mallorca, in England. It may therefore be considered quite remarkable that he suffered his fatal heart attack in his Leeuwarden’s Amicitia hotel room at a less than thirty yards distance from his birthplace.