John Franklin Bardin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 30, 1916. During his teens, he lost nearly all of his immediate family to various illnesses. As he approached thirty, he moved to New York City where he was an executive of an advertising agency, publishing ten novels and teaching creative writing and advertising at the New School for Social Research. In 1946, Bardin entered a period of intense creativity during which he wrote three crime novels that have since become genre-spanning classics: The Deadly Percheron, The Last of Philip Banter, and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly. Mr. Bardin resided in New York City's East Village until his death in 1981.

John Franklin Bardin's most acclaimed work plays a virtuoso performance on music and madness in this unforgettable thriller.
In 1946 New York, Ellen, a world-renowned musician, is suffering from the effects of her latest mental breakdown. Amongst other challenges, a chance meeting with a folk singer from her past causes her psychological well-being to rapidly deteriorate. Over the following terrifying weeks, Ellen finds herself becoming both a criminal and a victim as she attempts to contend with the darkness within.
"We have all had these feelings, more or less, and now and then. The healthier among us try to step back from the brink, try to laugh at what might have happened if we had gone a bit further. The reader of these tales will read in horror-those who can take it. And they will not forget very soon." -Patricia Highsmith