Novelist John Dudley Ball was born in Schenectady, NY, in 1911, the son of a scientist. He grew up in Milwaukee, WI, and attended Wisconsin's Carroll College. After graduation he worked as a staff writer specializing in science for "Fortune" magazine, then went to work for the "Brooklyn Eagle" newspaper as a feature writer and music critic, and held a variety of jobs in the publishing and broadcasting industries. A prolific novelist, his best-known work would have to be "In the Heat of the Night" (1965), which was turned into both a successful film (Dans la chaleur de la nuit (1967)) and a successful TV series (In the Heat of the Night (1988).He died in Encino, CA, in October of 1988.