Aka Jacques Pendower, Marilyn Pender, Kathleen Carstairs, Tom Curtis, Penn Dower, Helen Howard, T.C.H. Pendower, Anne Penn.

T.C.H. (Thomas Curtis Hicks) Jacobs, was a prolific English pulp fiction author of Westerns, romances, true crime stories, and spy and detective fiction. He was born in Plymouth, Devonshire, England, on 30 December 1899, to Mary and Robert Jacobs, a printer and paper merchant, and educated in a local Plymouth grammar school. Jacobs wrote his first published work for the Western Weekly News at age sixteen.

Jacobs served in the British Army Infantry from 1917 to 1921. In 1918, he was wounded in action and taken prisoner of war. He escaped and was demobilized in 1921 as a second lieutenant. After the war, Jacobs joined the English civil service as a revenue investigating officer. In 1925, he married Muriel Newbury.

In 1928, Jacobs sold his first novel, an "economic necessity," he later recalled, as a serial published by A. J. Rhodes. During his 23 years with the Inland Revenue, Jacobs wrote at night. From 1950 to 1976, he wrote full time. He began by writing many short stories for boys' magazines, but as the popularity of short stories for boys' magazines and fiction declined around 1950, he branched into non-fiction writing with a trilogy on the study of murder.

In 1953, Jacobs became a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association; in 1960-1961 he served as its chairman. His other memberships included The Society of Civil Service Authors, the Press Club, Radio and Television Guild, Society of Authors, and the Bexley Rotary Club. In 1939, Jacobs attained the distinction of being the first English civil servant to have a film made from one of his novels, Traitor Spy.

For much of his life, Jacobs apparently made his home in Bexley, Kent, England. He died in London in 1976; his obituary was listed under the pseudonym Jacques Pendower.

In a 1961 interview printed in the Rotary News in Bexley, Kent (under the pseudonym T.C.H. Pendower), Jacobs revealed some of his literary method. He attributed having set working hours and keeping at the writing, rather than inspiration, as key. He began with a central idea and characters, not an extensive synopsis that would restrict his writing. In his mysteries, Jacobs noted that he established the ending first, and then started writing the story. He did develop, however, dialogue, character descriptions, and notes on locales in his authorial commonplace books.

As an example of how Jacobs approached the formulaic writing of pulp fiction, he explained that he wrote his Westerns from his home in Bexley, Kent, by using the Encyclopaedia Britannica, fifty stock Western words, and Texas as the setting for all the stories. In 1957, in a letter to "My Dear John" (a fellow author who wrote under the pseudonym Col. Vernon Hinchley), Jacobs told how he expanded a short story to novel length by inserting new incidents in the middle that began and ended there.

Jacobs wrote more than 100 novels and short stories under many pseudonyms, including Jacques Pendower, T.C.H. Pendower, Penn Dower, Tom Curtis, Marilyn Pender, Kathleen Carstairs, Helen Howard, and Anne Penn. His works, written for popular markets in England, France, Spain, Germany, and the United States, were translated into most of the languages of Western Europe.