John Lee (March 12, 1931 – 2013) was an American writer of thrillers, many of them set in Second World War settings, as well as non-fiction books. He was also a professor of journalism, distinguished by his conscious decision not to take up a doctorate despite having made all the preparations for it.
Lee was married to novelist Barbara Moore until her death in 2002 and regularly commuted between Memphis, Tennessee and Texas. Retired from teaching, he was later married to Shirley Miller Lee, a former South African, and lived on a ranch in Central Texas.
His best-known book is The Ninth Man, in which a daring Nazi spy penetrates the White House and nearly succeeds in assassinating President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has also written six non-fiction books, including two popular university journalism texts (co-written with Edward Jay Friedlander).
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Early life
Born in Oklahoma on March 12, 1931, Lee was raised and educated in Brownsville, Texas. He attended college at Texas Tech, where he studied journalism under J. Russell Heitman, earning a B.A. While at Tech, he met and married fellow student Jeane Womack. They had a daughter, Janet Carol (Lee's only child), in 1952. Upon graduation, he went to work briefly as a sports writer for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, then was hired by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he spent the next five years. His first marriage ended in 1956. In 1957, he married reporter Barbara Moore, who was also to become a novelist. The couple went to Europe for a year, living in Fuengirola, Spain, and returned to the United States in 1958 to work for the Denver Post for two years, then to corporate public relations for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. After two years at Goodyear, they went to Mexico to continue writing fiction.