Jeffrey Dean Lindsay is a chemical engineer and patent agent who received attention as an amateur apologist for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prior to his current professional position as Solutions Development Director at Innovation Edge, he was a Corporate Patent Strategist and Senior Research Fellow at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, Wisconsin, as well as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.

Jeff Lindsay is the pen name of American playwright and crime novelist Jeffry P. Freundlich (born July 14, 1952), who lives in Cape Coral, Florida with his wife, author Hilary Hemingway, daughter of Leicester Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's brother. Lindsay is best known for writing the Dexter series of novels. Many of his earlier published works include his wife as a co-author. Time Blender was written with Michael Dorn. He graduated from Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1975.

The first book in the series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, was included on the original nomination list for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Awards in the Best First Novel category. However, it was dropped from the list after the group learned that Lindsay had put out several books in the 1990s under another pen name, Jeffrey P. Lindsay.

A TV series called Dexter has aired on the US cable network Showtime in 2006, with the first season of 12 episodes being primarily based on the first novel of the series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The second season is currently airing. While it was originally speculated that the second season storyline will be based on the follow-up novel, Dearly Devoted Dexter, it's since been announced, and shown in second season episodes, that the show writers developed an original storyline with some small situational simularities to the novel.