The stars are Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken. The director is Tony Scott, known for blockbusters such as Top Gun and Crimson Tide. But the identity of the writer of Man on Fire, the bestseller that hits the big screen in Britain this weekend, has been a riddle for a quarter of a century. Until now.
The film, starring Washington as a mercenary bodyguard, has been a hit in America, and the book on which it is based has sold 7.4 million copies worldwide in 20 languages. It is credited simply to 'AJ Quinnell', the pseudonym of a man about whom virtually nothing is known.
Now Quinnell has broken a 25-year silence to give The Observer his first newspaper interview. The enigma behind 12 books that have earned a cult following around the globe - four more are under option in Hollywood - is revealed as a thrice-married Briton who travelled the world, took up his pen after a chance encounter with the Mafia and borrowed his alter ego from a Welsh rugby player.
Man on Fire is a critically praised story of a kidnapping in Italy (the movie version transfers it to Mexico). Now in his early sixties, Quinnell recalled the Mafia's role in its genesis: 'I was flying from Tokyo to Hong Kong, and the man next to me had a heart attack. He was elderly and obviously very wealthy, dripping with gold. The flight crew were going to call an ambulance from the general hospital, which would have been a disaster, because it's a huge government hospital and not very efficient. But I knew the captain and persuaded him to call a private hospital instead.
'Two days later, a lot of young men in smart suits turned up. It transpired the man was a member of one of the old Italian families. They said if I ever needed help I should get in contact. The man subsequently died, but when it came to researching my book, I had the name of his son, who put me in touch with his lawyer in Rome, who put me in touch with various people I wanted to talk to.
'They didn't actually come out of it very well: the juxtaposition of the violence that went on in those days with the very kind people I met at the hospital was extraordinary. When I wrote the book, I said to them I'd change all their names, but they refused. I said, "Look, you all die terribly." They said, "We don't care, we want to be in the book," so I left them in.'
Quinnell has repeatedly shunned publicity and few of his publishers know his real name, which he asked The Observer not to disclose. He explained: 'When I was finishing that book, I had another at the back of my mind, The Mahdi, long before the Salman Rushdie fatwa. It wasn't particularly anti-Islamic, but it was a spy story which involved Islam, Mecca and so on. I wanted freedom of movement, so I decided to take a pen name at that point.
'I chose the name Quinnell when I was in a bar at home. My agent rang me up and said, "Look, if you want a pen name, give it to me now because they need to start printing." I used to play a lot of rugby and remembered the Welsh player Derek Quinnell. I sent that off and the agent came back and said, "You need initials or a first name." The bartender's son was AJ, so I took that.
'Curiously enough, when you use a pen name and no one knows your real name, not even your publisher, you get people who suddenly tell their friends they're AJ Quinnell. It can be a little strange.'
Quinnell - who still writes in longhand using a felt-tip pen - was born in Nuneaton during a German air raid. His childhood was spent in Tanzania and at boarding school in West Yorkshire. At 20, he became a trader in Hong Kong. He has been married for nine years to Elsebeth Egholm, a detective novelist 20 years his junior. They divide their time between her native Denmark and what he describes - with an air of mystery - as 'an island in the Mediterranean'.
