Author Biography
Author Ron Franscell
A veteran journalist, Ron Franscell is the author of 18 books, including international bestsellers THE DARKEST NIGHT and Edgar-nominated true crime MORGUE: A Life in Death. His latest true crime, SHADOWMAN: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling, was released in 2022 by Berkley/Penguin-Random House.
His atmospheric and muscular writing—hailed by Ann Rule, Vincent Bugliosi, William Least-Heat Moon, and others—has established him as one of the most provocative voices in narrative nonfiction. But his newest title DEAF ROW signals a return to crime fiction for the first time in 20 years, a happy side-effect of the COVID pandemic that made Ron’s robust boots-on-the-ground research impossible. (WildBlue Press reissued his earliest mysteries, THE DEADLINE and THE OBITUARY.)
Ron’s first book, ANGEL FIRE was a literary novel that became a USA Today bestseller and was eventually listed by the San Francisco Chronicle among the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century West. His later success grew from blending techniques of fiction-writing with his daily journalism. The result was dramatic, detailed, and utterly true storytelling.
Ron has established himself as a plucky reporter, too. As a senior writer at the Denver Post, he covered the evolution of the American West but shortly after 9/11, he was dispatched by the Post to cover the Middle East during the first months of the War on Terror. In 2004, he covered devastating Hurricane Rita from inside the storm. He’s also won the Associated Press Managing Editors’ national Freedom of Information Award for investigative reporting.
His book reviews and essays have been widely published in many of America’s biggest and best newspapers, such as the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury-News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and others. He has been a guest on CNN, Fox News, NPR, the Today Show, ABC News, and he appears regularly on crime documentaries at Investigation Discovery, Oxygen, History Channel, Reelz, and A&E.
He now lives with his wife Mary in the high desert of northern New Mexico, where they tend a vineyard, feed wild horses, and move a lot of rocks.
