Kenneth Roy Greenhall was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 1, 1928, the son of immigrants from England. He graduated from Southeastern High School in Detroit at age 15, worked at a record store for a time, then was drafted into the military where he served in Germany from 1951 to 1952. He earned his degree from Wayne State University in 1958 and moved to New York, where he worked as an editor of reference books, first on the staff of the Encyclopedia Americana and later for the New Columbia Encyclopedia. Greenhall had a longtime interest in the supernatural and took leave from his job to write his first novel, Elizabeth (1976), a tale of witchcraft published under his mother's maiden name, Jessica Hamilton. Several more novels followed, including Hell Hound (1977), which was published abroad as Baxter and adapted for a critically acclaimed 1989 French film under that title. He died in 2014.

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Ken Greenhall

Writer