Wager was best known as an author of mystery and spy fiction; his works included 58 Minutes (1987), whose story was used as the basis of the action film Die Hard 2 in 1990. Two of his other novels became major motion pictures in 1977: Viper Three (1972), which was released as Twilight's Last Gleaming, and Telefon (1975). Wager wrote a number of original novels in the 1960s under the pseudonym "John Tiger" that were based on the TV series I Spy and Mission: Impossible. Born Walter Herman Wager in the Bronx, NY, he was the son of Russian immigrants, and he attended Columbia College at Columbia University. He graduated in 1944 and later earned a law degree from Harvard; the practice of law interested him less than aviation, however, and Wager subsequently entered a fellowship program at Northwestern University through which he earned a degree in aviation law. He attended the Sorbonne for a year under a Fulbright scholarship at the end of the 1940s, and then turned his attention to earning a living. Wager spent the early '50s working as an aviation law consultant to the government of Israel, and from there moved to an editorial job at the United Nations, where he oversaw the editing of that organization's myriad publications. His interest in writing got him into radio at the tail-end of that medium's era of prominence, authoring scripts, and in his spare time he wrote stories. He was also a writer and producer for CBS Radio, CBS television, and NBC television and was editor-in-chief of Playbill from 1963 to 1966. In addition, Wager worked in public relations for ASCAP and the University of Bridgeport.

Roderick Mayne Thorp, Jr. was an American novelist specializing mainly in crime novels. As a young college graduate, Thorp worked at a detective agency owned by his father. He would later teach literature and lecture on creative writing at schools and universities in New Jersey and California, and also wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. Two of his best known novels were adapted into popular films: his 1966 novel The Detective was made into a 1968 film of the same name, starring Frank Sinatra as Detective Joe Leland, and his 1979 sequel to The Detective, Nothing Lasts Forever, was filmed in 1988 as Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. Though Die Hard was relatively faithful to Nothing Lasts Forever, it was not made as a sequel to the film version of The Detective. Two other Thorp novels, Rainbow Drive and Devlin, were adapted into TV movies. Thorp died of a heart attack in Oxnard, California.