William Bayer

He is married to cookbook author Paula Wolfert, and has lived with her in Tangier, Morocco; New York City, Martha's Vineyard; and in Newtown, Connecticut. They moved to San Francisco and Sonoma, California in 1994. As of September, 2021 they reside in the Hudson Valley in New York State.

His novel Peregrine, the first novel to feature Janek, won the 1982 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel. The French edition of The Dream Of The Broken Horses was awarded the 2005 Prix Mystère de la critique for best foreign crime novel as was the French edition of Switch. Bayer received the 1994 Prix Calibre 38 for the French edition of Mirror Maze, and the 1998 Lambda Literary Award for best mystery for The Magician's Tale. In 2020, his novel The Murals was short-listed for The International Association Of Crimewriters/North America, Dashiell Hammett Prize for “literary excellence in crime writing.”

Bayer's books have been translated into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Japanese, and nine other languages. He has written two novels under the pseudonym David Hunt, later republished in ebook editions under his own name. He wrote and directed the 1971 feature film Mississippi Summer which won the Best First Feature Award (the "Hugo") at the 1970 Chicago International Film Festival.

Bayer is the son of attorney Leo G. Bayer and dramatist Eleanor Rosenfeld Bayer, later known as the screenwriter Eleanor Perry. He describes his family background as "secular Jewish" and identifies as such. During the 1940s his parents wrote and published four mysteries using the pen name "Oliver Weld Bayer." They also wrote a children's book, Dirty Hands Across The Sea, edited a non-fiction anthology, Cleveland Murders, and co-wrote a play Third Best Sport which was produced on Broadway.