James Stapleton has spent the last thirty years working in the trenches of Silicon Valley marketing and public relations, witnessing firsthand the ambition that drives both startups and scandals. A graduate of Santa Clara University with honors, he combined his studies in fiction and screenwriting with a deep dive into Criminal Sociology?a fascination that now forms the backbone of the Odd Man In series.

Stapleton is no stranger to the publishing world. He founded Santa Clara Press in 1988 and is the author of two previous business books published by John Wiley & Sons: Practice Development (1999) and An Executive Guide to Knowledge Management (2003). As the publisher of The Professional Services Marketing Report, he spent years analyzing the structures of professional firms, insights he now applies to the complex criminal hierarchies in his fiction.

He lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.