Considered one of the pre-eminent ghost writers in the publishing world, Mr. Bain wrote more than 100 books, including most of the best-selling “Capital Crime” mystery novels of Margaret Truman. “It was magic,” Mr. Bain told Newsday in 1989. Mr. Bain, a onetime broadcaster and part-time jazz musician, began working as a pen-for-hire in the early 1960s and quickly built a lucrative, if anonymous, business. Mr. Bain graduated in 1957 from Purdue University in Indiana, where he studied speech and drama and played drums and vibraphone in jazz groups. A cousin who was a ghost writer offered him some magazine assignments, and Mr. Bain launched a new career.

Source: Washington Post October 28, 2017 23:15 UTC