John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania. He attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out to move to New York City, where he took menial to support himself. While attending the School of Management at Syracuse University, he met Dorothy Prentiss, and they married in 1937. He graduated from Syracuse the following year, and in 1939 he received an MBA from Harvard University. During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services in the Far East. In 1945, he wrote a short story for his wife and mailed it to her. She submitted it to the magazine Story, and it was published. When he returned home after the war, he wrote full-time, often working 14 hours every day. After five months without another success, he sold a story to the pulp magazine Dime Detective, and he continued to write for detective, mystery, adventure, sports, western and science fiction pulps. In 1950 his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, was published. In 1953, he began specializing in crime thrillers, producing some of the most-respected novels in the hardboiled style. Several of his novels have been made into films.
