Robert Thomas (28 September 1927, Gap, Hautes-Alpes –3 January 1989) was a French writer, actor and film director.He is something of a forgotten man in French theatre and cinema. By the time he was 18, he claimed he had read every play published in French since 1900.
As a writer, almost from the beginning, he was fascinated by a curious genre that he helped invent: the comédie policière or comedy thriller, of which Eight Women is a classic example. In 1960 Thomas scored a hit with Man Trap, a humorous murder mystery which was an overnight success in Paris. Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights and the play established Thomas as a writer of psychological crime dramas with a distinctively Gallic comic twist. The following year the second outing of Eight Women was far more successful as it won the Hachette Prix du Quai des Orfevres for Best Play in 1961.