William Bayer (pronounced “byer”) is an American novelist, the author of twenty-one books including The New York Times best-sellers Switch and Pattern Crimes.

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.

Of Bayer's novel The Magician's Tale, Marilyn Stasio wrote in The New York Times: "A strange seductive story as eerie as a midnight walk in the fog.

[Bayer] starts the fog machine by introducing us to the bleak world that a San Francisco photographer named Kay Farrow sees when she looks out from eyes that are completely colorblind.

But it is Kay's extraordinary vision that arrests us; with the starkness of a reverse negative, it shows us light and dark, truth and deception, reality and illusion, even good and evil in ways we never imagined.

As well as engrossing the reader utterly, it does high honor to the grand tradition of the American psychological thriller, and despite the riveting nature of its central act of horror, it also traces an exhilarating love affair between two bloodied but triumphantly humane survivors of the city's attrition.

"[5] Joseph McLellan, reviewing Tangier in The Washington Post: "The city is the main character of this intricate novel in which East and West meet convulsively and with mutual puzzlement.

William Bayer keeps scrupulously the narrative promises he has made and implied, the strands woven so cleverly and in such complex patterns, dyed with a strong influence of atmosphere, that one proceeds willingly, even hastily, through the close-packed pages.

"[6] Ben Pleasants, reviewing Tangier in The Los Angeles Times, wrote: "The graceful prose is as dazzling as the white washed city in full sun.