John Ballem

When he was 19, he joined the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and participated in WWII (1944–45). After the war was over he returned to Nova Scotia to attend Dalhousie University and completed the following degrees: B.A., 1946; M.A. 1948 & LL.B. 1949. Ballem also attended Harvard Law School and completed a post graduate LL.M. in 1950.[1] After completing university, he took on a job at the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor of law for 2 years (1950–1952). From there, he moved on to the oil industry in Alberta where he worked for over a decade. Following his career in the oil industry, Ballem moved to Calgary in 1962 and entered energy law practice.[1]

Although he wrote mystery novels set in exotic locations, such as the Caribbean and the Northwest Territories, Ballem's best known are his murder mysteries set in Alberta. During his career in the oil industry, he would write his famous Oilpatch Empire Trilogy which consisted of Oilpatch Empire (1985), Death Spiral (1986) and The Barons (1991). The trilogy would highlight the turbulent world of oil, business, power and sex in the Canadian oil industry and was considered Ballem's greatest work.[1]

Then there is The Oil Patch Quartet, an omnibus of four novels which included his first novel The Devil's Lighter. The novel was praised by former Calgary Herald books editor Kenneth McGoogan as "an invaluable picture of the Alberta oil industry from the halcyon 1950s through the tumultuous 1980s." The book sold out within a few days of its publication.[3][4]