mild-manner lawyer doubles as globe trotting mystery writer

lunched yesterday with the guru of oil and gas law, John Ballem. What's interesting about that, you ask? Well, Ballem also writes popular crime thrillers, 12 of them, to be precise. His latest, The Oil Patch Quartet, is an omnibus of his previously published The Barons, The Devil's Lighter, Oilpatch Empire and Death Spiral.

Although somewhat dated - The Devil's Lighter was written in the '50s and the female love interest drives a Rambler - the plots hold up. I know this because I read the first 50 pages and woke up two days, and 751 pages, later.

But what makes the 70-something Ballem so interesting is what he does with the rest of his life. Having done a pre-interview Google search, which yielded nothing more interesting than Ballem's interest in horses and service as a Navy pilot, I was gobsmacked to find that he has been to the North Pole and Antarctica (and plans to return south next year). Ballem was one of the key players in early Calgary Zoo years and made wildlife films in Africa, where he spent time with Louis Leakey. He drives a vintage Corvette and a Jag now, but his story (in The Devil's Lighter) of an engineer who's truck breaks down in the bitter Arctic cold, thus exposing said driver to certain death by freezing, was written from experience.

If you live in Alberta or Texas, or have an interest in oil and gas history, The Oil Patch Quartet is for you. If not, check out Manchineel (set in the Caribbean) or Murder as a Fine Art (set in the Rockies).