I) The writer P. S. Staines was famous for his portraits of criminal characters. II) Little did his readers know that many of these characters were drawn from real life. III) His father had been a diamond thief and served a long prison sentence when the writer was a young boy. IV) Of course, he had to do a lot of research for his female characters, too. V) It was from him that he got the idea for ‘Charlie Boots', the charming and clever thief in his first book, ‘The Diamond Factory'.