Eleven-year-old Denny and his younger sister Joan loved spending their summers at their grandmother's house near Danbury, Connecticut. One summer Grandmother took Denny aside to speak with him about a her house had recently been robbed three different times, and the strangest part of it was that each time the thief had taken nothing but old toys.
Raised in Maquoketa, Iowa, Milton Nachman Lomask earned a BA in journalism at the University of Iowa. After working in a succession of newspaper jobs in Texas, St. Louis, New York City and Chicago, he earned an MA degree at Northwestern University in 1941. Lomask served in the United States Army's Chemical Warfare Service during World War II, after which he worked in advertising and publicity before quitting in 1950 to work full-time as a writer.