About the Author
Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime writer best known for two series of novels set in Liverpool and the Lake District. He is series consultant for British Library Crime Classics, the Vice Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and President of the Detection Club. The Golden Age of Murder, his study of the Detection Club, was published in 2015 to international acclaim, and has been nominated for both the Edgar and Agatha awards for the year's best book about the genre. He received the CWA 2020 Diamond Dagger Award for sustained excellence in crime writing and significant contributions to the genre, joining the ranks of Sue Grafton, Ian Rankin, and Lee Child.
Adrian Muller is one of the co-founders of CrimeFest, the international crime fiction convention.
Peter James' Roy Grace detective novels have sold over nineteen million copies worldwide, have had twelve consecutive Sunday Times number-ones and are published in thirty-seven territories. Peter has won many literary awards, including the publicly voted ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards People's Bestseller Dagger, WH Smith readers' The Best Crime Author of All Time, and the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger Award. peterjames.com
Bill Beverly teaches at Trinity University in Washington, DC. His debut novel, Dodgers (No Exit Press), won the Gold Dagger and John Creasey New Blood Dagger from the CWA, the British Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His dissertation on criminal fugitives became the book On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover's America. authorbillbeverly.com
Simon Brett has published over a hundred books, many of them crime novels, including the Charles Paris, Fethering, Mrs Pargeter, and Blotto and Twinks series. His extensive comedy writing includes the series After Henry, which was successful on both radio and television. In 2014 he received the Crime Writers' Association's highest award, the Diamond Dagger, and in 2016 he was awarded an OBE for services to literature. simonbrett.com
Lee Child has more than a dozen number-one best sellers under his belt. Forbes calls the Jack Reacher series 'The Strongest Brand in Publishing.' Not bad for a guy out of work and on the dole when he first conceived of being a writer. The fictional Reacher is a kind-hearted soul who allows Lee lots of spare time for reading, listening to music, Aston Villa, and the Yankees. leechild.com
Ann Cleeves is the author of the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series, both of which have been adapted into acclaimed television dramas. She has written thirty-one novels and is translated into as many languages. In 2006 Raven Black, was awarded the Duncan Lawrie CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, and in 2017, Ann received the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger. anncleeves.com
Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author who has written thirty-nine novels, three collections of short stories, a nonfiction law book, and is a lyricist of a country-Western album. He's received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards. His The Bodies Left Behind was named Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers association, and his Lincoln Rhyme thriller, The Broken Window, and a stand-alone, Edge, were also nominated for that prize. jefferydeaver.com
Kate Ellis was born and brought up in Liverpool. Described by The Times as 'a beguiling author who interweaves past and present,' she is best known for her DI Wesley Peterson series. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger and for the CWA Dagger in the Library. Her first novel in a new trilogy set in the aftermath of World War I, A High Mortality of Doves, was published in 2016. kateellis.co.uk
Peter Guttridge is a novelist, critic, writing teacher, and chairperson/interviewer at a wide range of literature festivals and events. He is a former director of the Brighton Literature Festival and the current co-director of Books by the Beach, the Scarborough Book Festival. For eleven years he was the Observer newspaper's crime fiction critic. He is the award-winning author of twelve novels, two works of nonfiction, and numerous short stories. peterguttridge.com
Sophie Hannah is an internationally best-selling crime fiction writer. Her crime novels have been translated into thirty-four languages and published in fifty-one countries. In 2014 and 2016, Sophie published The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket, the first new Hercule Poirot mysteries since Agatha Christie's death, both of which were national and international bestsellers. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, two children, and dog. sophiehannah.com
John Harvey has been a professional writer for more than forty years and his work has been published in over twenty countries. Winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger and the Silver Dagger for Fiction, in 2007 he was awarded the CWA's Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In addition to his fiction and poetry, he has written for stage, radio, and television. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Hertfordshire and Nottingham. mellotone.co.uk
Mick Herron's novels include the Gold and Steel Dagger-winning Slough House series, about a bunch of messed-up spies. His work has been nominated for the Theakston, Macavity, Barry, and Shamus awards, and Real Tigers won the 2017 CrimeFest Last Laugh Award. His latest book is London Rules. He lives in Oxford and writes full-time. mickherron.com
Donna Moore is the author of Go to Helena Handbasket—a spoof PI novel which won the Lefty Award for humorous crime fiction in 2007—and Old Dogs—a caper novel set in Glasgow (nominated for both Last Laugh and Lefty Awards). Her short fiction has been published in various anthologies. She works at Glasgow Women's Library and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Stirling.
Caro Ramsay's first novel, Absolution, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger; her second, Singing to the Dead, was long-listed for the Theakston crime novel of the year. The tenth book in the Anderson and Costello series will be published in 2018. She has a diploma in forensic medical science and edited The Killer Cookbook for the Million for a Morgue campaign, which led to her having an embalming tank named after her. https://www.caroramsay.com/
Ian Rankin is the creator of John Rebus and has also written stand-alone novels. He has received four CWA Daggers, including the Diamond Dagger, as well as an Edgar, and awards in Denmark, France, and Germany. He lives in Edinburgh. ianrankin.net
James Sallis has published fourteen novels, multiple collections of short stories, poems and essays, the definitive biography of Chester Himes, three books of musicology, and a translation of Raymond Queneau's novel Saint Glinglin. The film of Drive won Best Director award at Cannes; the six Lew Griffin books are in development. Jim plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and Dobro both solo and with the band Three-Legged Dog.
Zoë Sharp opted out of mainstream education at twelve and wrote her first novel at fifteen. An autodidact with a love of language, house renovation, and improvised weaponry, she writes the award-winning crime thriller series featuring ex-soldier-turned-bodyguard Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox, and various stand-alones, including collaborations with espionage author John Lawton. Lee Child said of Sharp: 'If I were a woman, I'd be Zoë Sharp, and if Jack Reacher were a woman, he'd be Charlie Fox.' zoesharp.com
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is an internationally best-selling crime writer from Iceland, published by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK. In 2015 she won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel and her novels have twice been selected by the Sunday Times as crime novel of the year. Her latest book out in the UK is The Reckoning, a novel considered amongst her best work. Yrsa is a civil engineer by trade and still works as such in her native Iceland.
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (1926-1975) virtually created the modern detective novel. Their ten police procedurals about Martin Beck and his colleagues were written in the sixties and seventies, and the series amounts to a literary treasure, which has influenced countless contemporary authors.
Catherine Edwards was born in Cheshire, and educated locally and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where she read German and Italian. A journalist, writer, and translator, she speaks five languages and lives in Stockholm, where she writes about European news, politics, and culture in her role as Europe editor at The Local, an online news network.
Michael Stanley is the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip.
Both are retired professors who have worked in academia and business. Sears is a mathematician, specializing in geological remote sensing. Trollip is an educational psychologist, specializing in the application of computers to teaching and learning, and a pilot. They were both born in South Africa.
They have been on a number of flying safaris to Botswana and Zimbabwe, where it was always exciting to buzz a dirt airstrip to shoo the elephants off. They have had many adventures on these trips including tracking lions at night, fighting bush fires on the Savuti plains in northern Botswana, being charged by an elephant, and having their plane's door pop open over the Kalahari, scattering navigation maps over the desert. These trips have fed their love both for the bush, and for Botswana.
It was on one of these trips that the idea surfaced for a novel set in Botswana.
Andrew Taylor has won the CWA Diamond Dagger, the Historical Dagger (three times), and other awards. His books include the international bestseller, The American Boy; the Roth Trilogy (filmed for TV as Fallen Angel); the Dougal series and the Lydmouth series; and, most recently, The Times number-one bestseller The Ashes of London and its sequel The Fire Court. He also reviews for the Spectator and The Times. andrew-taylor.co.uk
