John N. Makris

A back-cover biography reveals the following about Makris

John N. Makris has been a crime reporter for the Boston Traveller, feature writer for the Boston Sunday Globe, Chicago Sunday Tribune, and New York News, and book reviewer for the Boston Sunday Herald. He has also handled a number of murder investigations for a prominent Boston criminal lawyer who is now a judge. Mr. Makris is currently a free-lance writer and has contributed to many magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy and Pageant. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Makris contributed stories and true-crime non-fiction to numerous magazines from the 1930s on, including Dare-Devil Aces, Smash Stories, National Detective Cases, Headquarters Detective, Greatest Detective Cases, 20th Century Crime Cases, Argosy and Mechanix Illustrated.

Makris was born in Massachusetts, in 1917, the son of Nicholas and Diamond Makris (nee Diamando Demakis), who were both Greek immigrants. Nicholas was a pedler for a fruit company living in Watertown, Massachusetts, where his children John, Betty (d. 2014, who later married Constantine Smerlas), Olga (d. 2011, later married Charles J. Paras), James N. (d. 2008), Catherine (later married Arthur DerBoghaosian) and Irene (later married Aristides Cagos) were all born.

Aside from his work as a crime reporter, Makris wrote a single novel, published as half of an Ace Double in 1953. In 1955, Matt Cvetic (Wikipedia), who had been involved in an FBI sting, posing as a Communist, was writing a book about his experiences with the aid of "a rewrite man" by the name of John N. Makris (►). The book was dropped by a Boston publisher and it was eventually self-published as The Big Decision in 1959.

He was a patron of the Watertown Public Library. Makris, I believe, was married to Katherine C. George and had two children, Barbara and Nicholas. Makris died in 1975, survived by his wife who, when she died in 2008, was survived by three grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

PUBLICATIONS

Novel
Nightshade (with High Stakes by Lester Dent). New York, Ace Books D-21, 1953.

Non-fiction
The Silent Investigators. The great untold story of the United States Postal Inspection Service, intro. by D. H. Stephens. New York, Dutton, 1959.
The Big Decision. The story of Matt Cvetic, Counterspy by Matt Cvetic (ghosted). Hollywood, CA. Mat Cvetic, 1959.

Others
Boston Murders, ed. John K. Makris. New York, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.