Pendleton Don

Don Pendleton was an American author of fiction and nonfiction books, best known for his creation of American hero The Executioner: Mack Bolan.
Pendleton served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, serving in all theaters of the war. His enlistment ended in November 1947. He returned to active duty in 1952 during the Korean War and served until 1954. He worked as a telegrapher for the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1957, and then as an air traffic control specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration. In the 1960s, he worked for Martin Marietta on the Titan missile program. He later served as an engineering administrator at NASA during the Apollo missions. Pendleton also worked on the C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft program.
He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a Comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than one hundred twenty-five books in his long career and his books have been published in more than twenty-five foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.
After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."
"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."