Occupation Novelist Name John Dunning | Role Writer Awards Nero Award, Dilys Award | |
 | ||
Born January 9, 1942 (age 82)
Brooklyn, New York ( 1942-01-09 ) Genre Detective fiction, mystery Nominations Edgar Award for Best Novel, Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original Books Booked To Die, The Bookman's Wake, On the Air: The Encyclop, The Bookman's Promise, The Sign of the Book | ||
John Dunning (born January 9, 1942) is an American writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. He is known for his reference books on old-time radio and his series of mysteries featuring Denver bookseller and ex-policeman Cliff Janeway.
Contents
Life
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942, Dunning moved to his father's hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of three. In 1964 he left his parents' home and moved to Denver, Colorado, where, after a time working as a stable hand at a horse racing track, he got a job at The Denver Post. In 1970 he left the newspaper and took up writing novels, while pursuing a variety of jobs. Partly because of trouble with his publishers, in 1984 he stopped writing and opened a store specializing in second-hand and rare books called the Old Algonquin Bookstore. At the urging of fellow authors, he returned to the world of novels in 1992 with his first Cliff Janeway novel, Booked to Die. In 1994 he closed the store and continued it as an internet and mail order business called Old Algonquin Books.
Dunning currently lives in Denver with his wife Helen.
Radio
In addition to compiling encyclopedic reference books about the history of radio programming, Dunning hosted a long-running weekly radio show, Old-Time Radio.