Rodney William Whitaker, widely known by his pen name Trevanian, was a renowned American film scholar and writer.

He wrote several novels under different pseudonyms including Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot, and Edoard Moran, alongside his real name.

His writings spanned a wide array of genres and achieved bestseller status. Five of his novels, published between 1972 and 1983, sold over a million copies each. He was famously described as "the only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Émile Zola, Ian Fleming, Edgar Allan Poe, and Geoffrey Chaucer."

Despite his prominent success, Whitaker was known for avoiding publicity, keeping his real identity a secret for many years. His true name was eventually revealed in the 1980 reference book Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers.