Author Oakley M. Hall was born in San Diego in 1920. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the Marines and served in the Pacific during World War II. Taking advantage of the G. I. Bill after the war, he studied in Europe and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He founded the creative writing program at the University of California at Irvine and co-founded the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He wrote the Ambrose Bierce Mystery series and his best known novels are Downhill Racers and Warlock. He died of kidney disease and cancer on May 13, 2008.