John William Wainwright was born in Leeds in 1921. He left school at fifteen and served as a rear gunner in Lancaster bombers during the Second World War. After military service, he joined the West Riding Constabulary as a Police Constable in 1947. After earning himself a law degree by distance learning in 1956, he turned to writing crimes novels. He left the police force in the late 1960s and became a full-time novelist typically writing an average of three books a year until 1984. Wainwright died in 1995, a few months after the publication of his last novel, The Life and Times of Christmas Calvert... Assassin.
