Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1941, Malcolm Shuman grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and was educated at Louisiana State University, which awarded him a B.A. in 1962 in the fields of geography & anthropology. Shuman then had the privilege of serving in the U.S. Army from 1963 to 1966 where, as a member of the military police, he was assigned to Sandia Base New Mexico, with a Top Secret security clearance. He remains convinced that he was part of a clever decoy unit meant to lower cold war tensions by convincing the Soviets that the U.S. defense establishment was too incompetent to be a threat to their interests.

Shuman married his wife, Mary Margaret, in 1964 and, after being invited not to reenlist, stayed on at the University of New Mexico to get his M.A. in anthropology, focusing on archaeology.

In 1969, M.A. in hand, Shuman and wife returned to Louisiana, where he enrolled in Tulane University to pursue his doctorate. The pair’s first child, Summer, was born in 1971, on the eve of the family’s departure to Yucatan, Mexico, where Shuman spent the next three years doing his doctoral research in the field of cultural anthropology, among the Maya Indians.

In 1974, Shuman returned to the U.S., made a pit stop at Tulane to pick up his Ph.D. diploma, and then went to North Texas State University in Denton (now the University of North Texas), where he took a one year temporary position as lecturer.

The next year and a half saw him in Kingsville, Texas, as a member of the faculty of Texas A&I University. He resigned in late 1976 to participate in a field project in Yucatan.

Returning to the States in late 1977, Shuman became affiliated with Louisiana State University, with which he was affiliated, off and on, until 1992. His son, Karl, was born in 1980 and now attends college in Baton Rouge. Since leaving the University, Shuman has been in private practice as a contract archaeologist (no, that’s not the kind of archaeologist who kills people) and he has published 13 (soon to be 14) novels, under the names M.S. Karl, M. K. Shuman, and Malcolm Shuman. In 2000, he had foisted upon him the chairmanship of the Mystery Writers of America committee to select the best mystery novel of 2000, a job he dared not refuse if he ever wanted to publish again.

He is represented by Peter Rubie, of the Peter Rubie Literary Agency.