Thomas Blanchard Dewey was born on March 6, 1915 in Elkhart, Indiana. He graduated from Kansas State Teachers College and then became an editor at Storycraft, Inc., a Hollywood correspondence school. He went to work as an administrative assistant for the State Department in Washington DC in the mid-1940s before joining an advertising firm in Los Angeles. Dewey began his writing career with Hue and Cry in 1944, featuring amateur sleuth Singer Batts. He went on to create two more series characters, Pete Schofield and Mac, one of the most believable and humane PIs in crime fiction. Dewey made a living as a full time novelist from 1952-1971, until he stopped writing and became an assistant professor of English at Arizona State University where he stayed until 1977. He died in April of 1981 in Tempe, Arizona.