John Wayne Falbey
The name first, since everyone asks: he wasn't named after the Duke. His parents had settled on “Wayne” — but at hospital checkout, a nurse insisted every child needed two given names, and his flustered father, John, offered his own. The rest is history.
Falbey is a native Floridian, descended on one side from a grandfather who grew citrus along the Halifax, Tomoka, and Indian Rivers. He entered college with vague plans in the sciences that lasted approximately ten minutes into an introductory calculus class, switched to pre-law, and went on to graduate from Vanderbilt University School of Law.
He spent years practicing transactional law for real estate investors, developers, and lenders — then crossed the table into development itself. Along the way he added an MBA and a doctorate in business management, and built and chaired a graduate program in real estate development. Between law, business, and academia, he learned the power of words, and the importance of using precisely the right ones.
The writing
He wrote his first novel, The Quixotics — gunrunning to anti-Castro insurgents in the 1970s Caribbean — between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. as a law student. Literary agents later coaxed a second stand-alone out of him, The Taxman Cometh, about a rogue IRS agent who destroys the world of the one man he should have left alone. In 2010 he returned to his first love full-time, and the Sleeping Dogs were born: a series named for Chaucer's six-century-old imperative that it is nought good a sleeping hound to wake.
He continues to expand the Sleeping Dogs series. Eight Sleeping Dogs thrillers are in print; the ninth, Hidden Dragons, Sleeping Dogs, arrives in November 2026. And no — we haven't heard the last from those Dogs.
The rest of the day
When he isn't writing, he's training — swimming, cycling, running, and weights, daily — including, on one memorable occasion, a two-day, 123-mile ride from Miami to Key West. This may explain why the Dogs never seem to get winded.
What reviewers say
“Falbey offers a bold, gritty spy thriller”
Kirkus Reviews · Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening
“Reads like a novel written by a master craftsman. Thoroughly researched, and fast paced.”
Suzanne Anderson, author
“The last several chapters kept me up long after my flight had landed.”
Amazon reviewer
Stand-alone thrillers
The Quixotics · The Taxman Cometh
Elsewhere
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