Donald H. Carpenter was born in Baton Rouge, and attended the University of Virginia, Louisiana State University, Kennesaw State University, and Georgia State University. He worked for 25 years as a forensic certified public accountant (CPA) in Atlanta and Nashville. He began writing in the 1970s and published his first book in 1993. He has written four novels, one book of political satire, and this full-length biography of Clay Shaw, the prominent gay New Orleans man implicated in the Kennedy assassination.