John Dunning was an author in the True Crime genre. He worked for the US Navy and intelligence services and spent time in a Japanese POW camp in World War II. Afterwards he became a journalist and contributed many articles to True Crime magazines. Several collections of such stories were published in both hard- and softback form. Many of the cases are situated in mainland Europe, and have not attracted as much attention as equally horrific crimes in the USA.

He held strong views on crime, and frequently advocated the death penalty in the forewords of his books. John Dunning died in Luxembourg in 1990.