Education
He was educated at the University of Wisconsin and was an associate professor of writing at the California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, California.
He was educated at the University of Wisconsin and was an associate professor of writing at the California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, California.
Working in radio and advertising in the early 1940s, Ballinger wrote 81 radio scripts and produced The Dinah Shore Show, The Breakfast Club, and Lowell Thomas broadcasts. After Ballinger moved from New York to Los Angeles he began writing full-time. The author of 30 books, Ballinger also used the names Bachelor of Surgery Sanborn and Frederic Fryer.
The first was The Body in the Bed in 1948.
Ballinger"s two main fictional characters in his novels were Chicago private investigator Barr Breed and Native American Central Intelligence Agency Agent Joaquin Hawke. Ballinger was a frequent writer for American television with 150 teleplays to his name.
In addition to his books and teleplays, Ballinger wrote screenplays for Burt Topper"s The Strangler (1963) and Operation Central Intelligence Agency (1965), a Burt Reynolds spy film set in Vietnam but filmed in Thailand. The Body in the Bed (New York, Harper, 1948)
The Body Beautiful (New York, Harper, 1949)
The Spy in the Jungle (New York, New American Library, 1965)
The Chinese Mask (New York, New American Library, 1965)
The Spy in Bangok (New York, New American Library, 1965)
The Spy at Angor Wat (New York, New American Library, 1966)
The Spy in the Java Sea (New York, New American Library, 1966)
Portrait in Smoke (New York, Harper, 1950)
The Darkening Room (New York, Harper, 1952)
Rafferty (New York, Harper, 1953)
The Tooth and the Nail (New York, Harper, 1955)
The Black Black Hearse (New York, Street Martin"s Press, 1955) - as Frederic Freyer
The Longest Second (New York, Harper, 1957)
The Wife of the Red-Haired Manitoba (New York, Harper, 1957)
Beacon in the Night (New York, Harper, 1958)
Formula Foreign Murder (New York, New American Library, 1958)
The Doom Maker (New York, Dutton, 1959) - as B.X. Sanborn.
The Fourth Forever (New York, Harper, 1963)
Not I Said the Vixen (New York, Fawcett, 1965)
The Heir Hunters (New York, Harper, 1966)
The Source of Fear (New York, New American Library, 1968)
The 49 Days of Death (Los Angeles, Pyramid, 1969)
Heist Maine Higher (New York, New American Library, 1969)
The Lopsided Manitoba (Los Angeles, Pyramid, 1969)
The Corsican (New York, Dodd Mead, 1974)
The Law (New York, Warner, 1975), novelisation
The Ultimate Warrior (New York, Warner, 1975)
Lost City of Stone (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1978).