Fletcher Knebel (1911 – 1993) was an American author of several popular works of political fiction.

Knebel was born in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from high school in Yonkers, New York, spent a year studying at the University of Paris and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He spent the next 20 years working for newspapers, as a political columnist.

He went on to write fifteen books, most of them fiction, and all of them dealing with politics. His best-known novel is Seven Days in May (1962, co-authored with Charles W. Bailey), about an attempted military coup in the United States. The book was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for almost a year, and was made into a successful movie in 1964.

He is the source of the quote "Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics."