Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, John Dann MacDonald was educated at Syracuse University, where he took a B.S. in 1938, and at the Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he took an M.B.A. the following year. He has also studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army, eventually leaving the service as a lieutenant colonel. His first published science-fiction story, "Cosmetics," appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1948, and readers subsequently encountered his work in Thrilling Wonder Stories and Super Science Fiction. Although he has since become known as an immensely successful and prolific mystery writer (with more than sixty novels, six hundred short stories, and sales of seventy million copies to his credit), MacDonald did not allow his apprenticeship in science fiction to go to waste, for he has produced three highly regarded novels in the genre.

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