Look back at the authors who made the 2009 Festival such a success…
MEGAN ABBOTT was born in Detroit. She has taught literature, writing and film at universities in New York and she has written three novels: Die A Little, which was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and is now being developed by United Artists as a major Hollywood movie; The Song is You, based on the real-life disappearance of actress Jean Spangler in the case that became known as ‘Daughter of Black Dahlia’, and, her most recent work, Queenpin, which won the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original and further establishes Megan as the new Queen of Noir. She is also the author of the non-fiction study, The Street was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in New York City.
M.C. BEATON was born in Glasgow in 1936. She has worked as a fiction buyer, as women’s fashion editor for the magazine Scottish Field, as a reporter and theatre critic for the Scottish Daily Express (Glasgow), and as a reporter for the Daily Express (London). She is the author of the Agatha Raisin novels and the Hamish Macbeth series. 2009 is the 20th year since feisty Agatha Raisin was created, and 2010 will be the 25th since Highland PC Hamish Macbeth first appeared – and both detectives are proving to be more popular than ever. She divides her time between Paris and the Cotswolds.
MARK BILLINGHAM was born and raised in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian, his first crime novel was published in 2001. Sleepyhead was an instant bestseller in the UK. It was published in the USA in the summer of 2002 and has been sold throughout the world.
Though still working occasionally as a stand-up comic, Mark now concentrates on writing the series of crime novels featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne, and recently a standalone thriller, In The Dark. Tom Thorne was voted Best Detective Created by a British Author at the Sherlock Awards in 2003. Mark has also co-written the first two of a trilogy of thrillers for children under the pseudonym Will Peterson. He lives in North London with his wife and two children.
JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford in 1945. He was educated at Christian Brothers’ and St Peter’s College, Wexford. He started working in journalism in 1969 and was Literary Editor of The Irish Times from 1988 to 1999. His first book, Long Lankin, a collection of short stories and a novella, was published in 1970, followed by the novels Nightspawn, Birchwood, Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter, Mefisto, The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable, Eclipse, Shroud and The Sea, A further three novels were written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black – Christine Falls, The Silver Swan and The Lemur. Among his numerous awards are the Allied Irish Banks fiction prize, the American-Irish Foundation award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the 2005 Man Booker Prize, for The Sea.
GYLES BRANDRETH is a writer, broadcaster and former MP, currently a regular on BBC Radio 4′s Just a Minute and a reporter with BBC1′s The One Show. Since his first job in 1971 on the Manchester Evening News, Gyles has contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, Daily Mail, and the Evening Standard. In the UK his recent TV appearances include Have I Got News for You, QI, Public Opinion, Countdown and Celebrity Mastermind. In 2003 he was the subject of the BBC TV’s tribute show This Is Your Life. He appears regularly on BBC Radio in assorted comedy and current affairs shows, including The Westminster Hour, and Broadcasting House. His Oscar Wilde series has been extremely popular. His own Wilde connections include his past headmaster, who was a friend of the Wildes, and his own father who knew Wilde’s confidante Robert Sherard and several of his circle.
SIMON BRETT worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. As well as the much-loved Fethering series, the Mrs Pargeter novels and the Charles Paris detective series, he is the author of the radio and television series After Henry, the radio series No Commitments and Smelling of Roses and the bestselling How to Be a Little Sod. His novel, A Shock to the System was filmed, starring Michael Caine.
Married with three grown-up children, he lives in an Agatha Christie-style village on the South Downs.
TOM CAIN is the pseudonym for an award-winning journalist, with 25 years’ experience working for Fleet Street newspapers, as well as major magazines in Britain and the US. During the course of his career he has conducted several hundred in-depth interviews with senior politicians, billionaire entrepreneurs, Olympic athletes, movie stars, supermodels and rock legends. He has investigated financial scandals on Wall Street, studio intrigues in Hollywood and corrupt sports stars in Britain. He has lived in Moscow, Washington DC and Havana. He has edited four magazines, published over a dozen books, written film-scripts and been translated into some twenty languages. He is the author of The Accident Man and The Survivor.
DUNCAN CAMPBELL was born and grew up in Scotland. He is now a senior correspondent on The Guardian having been the paper’s crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent. The Paradise Trail published last year was his first work of fiction and received huge praise. He has written five non-fiction books, including The Underworld and That Was Business, This Is Personal and two books on tour with the comedian, Billy Connolly. He has also written for IT, Oz, Ink, Time out and The Rising Nepal. He played cricket badly for many years for the New Statesman team and football worse for the West London Unattractives. He is married to actress Julie Christie.
LEE CHILD is British, and divides his time between France and New York. After redundancy from his Manchester television job, he wrote his first novel, Killing Floor introducing his maverick hero, the former military cop, Jack Reacher. Child is now established as one of the world’s leading thriller writers. With his latest hardback, Nothing to Lose, he achieved a rare double score, reaching number one on the Sunday Times bestsellers list in the same week as his new paperback, Bad Luck and Trouble.
ANN CLEEVES worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. As the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival’s Reader-In-Residence, she is also a member of Murder Squad, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction, as well as setting up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project.
In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for best crime novel of the year for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet, a dramatization of which has been commissioned by Radio 4. Her reading passion is crime in translation. Ann lives in North Tyneside with her husband.
N.J. COOPER is an ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and lifelong Londoner, she writes for a variety of newspapers and journals, contributes to many radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Saturday Review and regularly speaks at crime writing conferences on both sides of the Atlantic. The author of nine highly-acclaimed crime novels featuring barrister Trish Maguire, Natasha Cooper’s latest thriller, Life on the Edge, a tense and twisting novel of psychological suspense set on the Isle of Wight, introduces a brand-new series character in Karen Taylor, a beautiful young psychologist with a tragic past, and represents an exciting new direction for this much-loved crime writer.
ADAM CREED was born in Salford and read PPE at Balliol College Oxford before working for Flemings in the City. He abandoned his career to study writing at Sheffield Hallam University, following which he wrote in Andalucia then returned to England to work with writers in prison. He is now Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and Project Leader of Free To Write. He is married and has two daughters.
NEIL CROSS is a most sought-after TV writer. He has been lead scriptwriter for the past two seasons of the acclaimed BBC spy drama series Spooks and continues to write widely for the screen. Neil is the author of five previous novels: Mr In-Between, Christendom, Holloway Falls, Always the Sun and Natural History. Always the Sun was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 200??. His memoir, Heartland, was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller and his stunning psychological suspense thriller, Burial, has been widely acclaimed by critics, bloggers and writers, including Peter James, who said: ‘It is a long time since I’ve read a novel so compelling, chilling and satisfying.’ Neil’s next novel, Captured, will be published in January 2010. He now lives in New Zealand with his wife and two sons.
DANIEL DEPP is a former Hollywood screenwriter, film producer and elder brother of the actor Johnny Depp. He is no stranger to the temptations and illusions of Tinseltown, and has alarmingly intimate knowledge of the world of which he writes. His first full-length screenplay, The Brave, was nominated for a Palme D’Or at Cannes. Born in Kentucky, Daniel has been a journalist, bookseller and a teacher. There have been several exhibitions of his photographs, and he has also taught scriptwriting. He now divides his time between France and California, where he writes and produces screenplays. Loser’s Town is his first novel, and heralds the start of a series featuring laconic private eye David Spandau.
RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS has written seriously and/or frivolously since 1993 for almost every national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. She appears frequently on radio and television in Ireland, the UK and on the BBC World Service. Ruth feels both Irish and English and greatly enjoys being part of both cultures. The Anglo-Irish Murders, her ninth crime novel, is a satire on the peace process. Three times a bridesmaid, she has been short-listed by the Crime Writers’ Association for the John Creasey Award for the best first novel and twice for the Last Laugh award for the funniest crime novel of the year.
STELLA DUFFY was born in London and raised in New Zealand, she is the author of ten novels, over thirty stories, and eight plays. Her novel State of Happiness was long-listed for the 2004 Orange Prize, and she is currently writing the screenplay adaptation for the feature film production. With Lauren Henderson, she co-edited the anthology Tart Noir, from which her story ‘Martha Grace’ won the 2002 CWA Short Story Award. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4, in sitcoms, plays and quizzes, and is a performer with comedy company Spontaneous Combustion and theatre company Improbable. She is an occasional guest with the Comedy Store Players. Her crime series featuring Saz Martin is published by Serpent’s Tail. Her latest novel, The Room of Lost Things, is published by Virago.
MARTIN EDWARDS is a practising solicitor and partner at the Liverpool and Manchester law firm, Mace & Jones. He published various legal articles and textbooks before turning his hand to crime fiction and is the author of the acclaimed legal mysteries featuring Harry Devlin. He also writes the hugely popular crime series set in the Lake District, including The Coffin Trail which saw him short-listed for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award. He is also a critic and has edited various short story collections and now has a very popular blog.
R.J. ELLORY is the author of five previous novels including the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels which was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and is now published in fourteen languages. His other novels have been translated into Italian, German and Dutch and City of Lies and Candlemoth have both been short-listed for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. He is married with one son, and lives in England.
JASPER FFORDE worked in the film industry for 19 years where his varied career included the role of ‘focus puller’ on films such as Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro and Entrapment. He had always harboured a dream of swapping his film career for full time writer. After receiving seventy six rejection letters, Jasper’s first novel The Eyre Affair was accepted by Hodder & Stoughton. Since then Jasper has become an international bestseller. The following Thursday Next books – Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels – won widespread critical acclaim. Jasper then began a new series set within the world of Nursery Crime characters, all living in Reading. The Big Over Easy, set out to answer the most mystifying question in criminal history: Who killed Humpty Dumpty? This was followed by The Fourth Bear which examined the disappearance of Goldilocks. Jasper lives in Wales and has a passion for aviation.
BARRY FORSHAW’S books include British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, along with books on Italian Cinema and Film Noir. He has written for the Independent, the Express, the Times, the TLS, Waterstone’s Books Quarterly and Movie Mai. He also edits Crime Time magazine, and is one of the talking heads for the ITV Crime Thriller author profiles. As well as his books (in most genres), he writes on film (creating booklets for special edition DVDs) and all aspects of the arts. In a previous career he was an illustrator, working for diverse clients, from The Natural History Museum to Jackie.
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER is the acclaimed author of twelve novels, including Roofworld, Spanky and Calabash, ten volumes of short stories, a graphic novel and six Bryant & May mysteries so far, including the award-winning Full Dark House and, most recently, The Victoria Vanishes. His latest book is Paperboy, a memoir of his childhood in south London and his lifelong love affair with reading, his passion for comics, and the joy of losing oneself in a good story. Chris has worked in the film industry for over thirty years and is the co-founder of Creative Partnership, a film marketing company. He lives in King’s Cross, London.
ARIANA FRANKLIN was born in Devon and, like her father, became a journalist. Having invaded Wales dressed in combat uniform with the Royal Marines for one of their military exercises, she accompanied the Queen on a royal visit and missed her own twenty-first birthday party because she had to cover a murder, she married a journalist ! She decided staying married was a good idea so she abandoned her career in national newspapers and settled down in the country to bring up two daughters, study medieval history and write. Ariana is the author of the critically acclaimed Mistress of the Art of Death (winner of the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award) and The Death Maze. Relics of the Dead is her third historical thriller featuring Adelia Aguilar.
FRANCES FYFIELD grew up in Derbyshire but now divides her time between London and Deal. She was a solicitor for what is now the Crown Prosecution Service and her legal knowledge colours and informs her novels. Her first book, A Question of Guilt, was published in 1988, and since then she has written twenty-three other books, a mix of the Helen West and Sarah Fortune series and many stand-alones. She won the CWA Silver Dagger for Deep Sleep in 1991, and recently won the 2008 CWA Duncan Lawrie Award with Blood From Stone. Her novels have been translated into fourteen languages and several of the Helen West novels have been adapted for television, starring Juliet Stevenson. Her recent project is presenting the Radio 4 programme, Tales from the Stave.
JASON GOODWIN has published three books in his Ottoman Detective series: The Janissary Tree (short listed for The Goss First Novel Award, the Macavity Award for Best Mystery novel and winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Fiction 2007), The Snake Stone (short listed for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award 2007 and the Macavity Award for best Historical Mystery) and The Bellini Card. The fourth book The Bulgarian Claimant will be published in 2010. Jason is also the highly acclaimed author of The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, On Foot to the Golden Horn: A Walk to Istanbul is his account of a six-month pilgrimage across Eastern Europe to Istanbul, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize 1993, and Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire which Jan Morris called ‘a high-octane work of art’. He is married with four children and lives in Dorset.
ALLAN GUTHRIE was born in Orkney in 1965 and attended Kirkwall primary school, where his P5 teacher allowed him to write during art classes, given his woeful lack of talent for visual art. After leaving school, he attended Aberdeen University, but a year later he left, degreeless, and moved to Edinburgh. While trying out a number of different professions Allan continued to write, and after hundreds of rejection slips Two-Way Split and Kiss Her Goodbye were both picked up within weeks of one another by two independent small presses in the USA. In 2006, Kiss Her Goodbye was nominated for an MWA Edgar Award, an Anthony Award and a Mystery Ink Gumshoe Award. Polygon took up the UK rights for both these novels, and has since published all four of Allan’s novels. His fifth novel, Slammer, was published in 2009.
PETER GUTTRIDGE is the creator of the award-winning Nick Madrid satirical crime series. Peter was born in Burnley, Lancashire and educated at Oxford and Nottingham Universities. He has written for top national newspapers and magazines including the Independent, the Times and the Telegraph and is the Observer’s crime fiction critic. His non-comic thriller, City of Dreadful Night, is about to be auctioned. He counts himself fortunate to have interviewed either for magazines and newspapers or on stage most of the leading contemporary crime writers in the US and the UK.
JOHN HARVEY is the author of the richly praised Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times as one of the ’100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.’ His first novel featuring Detective Inspector Frank Elder, Flesh and Blood, won the CWA Silver Dagger in 2004, and a Barry award for the Best British Crime Novel published in the US in 2004. He is also a poet, dramatist and occasional broadcaster. His latest novel, published in May 2009, is Far Cry. ‘Impassioned … heartbreaking … confirms Harvey as one of our most accomplished writers in any genre.’ Sunday Telegraph.
REGINALD HILL is a native of Cumbria and former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring Superintendent Dalziel and DCI Pascoe. Their appearances have won him numerous awards including a CWA Gold Dagger and Lifetime Achievement award. They have also been adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series. Praise for previous titles: ‘Hill is always clever and funny… he demands intense concentration – because he’s worth it.’ Literary Review ‘Hill is a masterful writer, quirky and intelligent ….’ The Times ‘His energy, wit and erudition are astonishing… he can still see off most of his rivals.’ Daily Telegraph
SUZETTE A. HILL is a graduate of the universities of Nottingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She taught English literature for many years at Reading College before retiring to Herefordshire, where she started writing the Bones series of novels featuring the adventures of hapless vicar Rev. Francis Oughterard and his animals, Maurice the supercilious cat and Bouncer his enthusiastic yet dim canine companion. Despite the novels’ narrative she lives convivially with neither cat, dog, nor clergyman. Suzette has written three books in the series, A Load of Old Bones, Bones in the Belfry and Bone Idle, all published by Constable & Robinson. Bones in High Places is the next book in the series.
MATT HILTON is a former police officer and security expert. He is also a high ranking Martial Artist and currently holds the rank of 4th Dan in the exacting combat art of Kempo JuJitsu. He lives in Cumbria with his wife and son. Dead Men’s Dust is Matt’s debut thriller and introduces series character Joe Hunter. The publication of Judgment and Wrath follows in October.
DECLAN HUGHES spent twenty years working in the theatre in Ireland, as a director, playwright and helping to run Rough Magic, Ireland’s leading independent theatre company. All the Dead Voices is the fourth Ed Loy title. The first in the series, The Wrong Kind of Blood won a Shamus Award for Best First Novel, and was short listed for a CWA New Blood Dagger.
PETER JAMES was educated at Charterhouse then at film school. He lived in North America for a number of years, working as a screenwriter and film producer before returning to England. His novels, including the number one bestseller Possession, have been translated into thirty languages and three have been filmed. All his novels reflect his deep interest in the world of the police, with whom he does in-depth research, as well as science, medicine and the paranormal. He has produced numerous films, including The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. He divides his time between his homes in Notting Hill in London and Sussex.
PAUL JOHNSTON was born in Edinburgh, and educated there and at Oxford. He is the author of ten crime novels, the first of which, Body Politic, won the British Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Novel. He has also won the Sherlock Award for Best Detective Novel. He now spends much of his time in Greece and has recently become a father for the third time. Paul’s most recent novels, The Death List and The Soul Collector, feature crime writer Matt Wells. Paul’s award-winning Alex Mavros trilogy, Crying Blue Murder, The Last Red Death and The Golden Silence, has recently been re-released by MIRA.
SIMON KERNICK is the author of many bestselling crime novels including Relentless, which was selected as a Richard and Judy Summer Read in 2007. He was also chairman of Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2008. He reviews fiction regularly for the Simon Mayo Book Show on Radio 5 Live, and has appeared on Sky News where he gave a crime writer’s view on the Suffolk prostitute murders. The research for his novels is what makes them so authentic. His extensive list of contacts in the police force has been built up over more than a decade. It includes long serving officers in Special Branch, the National Crime Squad (now SOCA), and the Anti-Terrorist Branch, all of whom have plenty of tales to tell. Simon Kernick lives near London and has two young children.
GENE KERRIGAN has been writing political journalism in Ireland since the 1970s. He was chosen as Journalist of the Year in 1985 and 1990. He has written seven non-fiction books and received critical acclaim in Ireland, the UK and the USA for his first two novels, Little Criminals and The Midnight Choir. Dark Times in the City was published by Harvill Secker in April 2009 and is a sophisticated crime story of contemporary Ireland. His novels conjure up a vivid, descriptive up-to-date picture of Dublin and expose the goings-on and pretensions of those who wield political and financial power with a caustic eye, often with a weary and biting humour.
DAVID LEVIEN was born in New York. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he spent three years in Los Angeles working in the film business, and began writing screenplays and fiction. Now one of the top screenwriters in Hollywood, David’s credits include Ocean’s Thirteen, Runaway Jury and Rounders. He recently co-directed the film Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito and Susan Sarandon. David’s novel City of the Sun introduces brooding investigator Frank Behr, and was published in 2008 to stellar reviews. His second novel, Where the Dead Lay, marks the return of Behr and is out now. David lives in Connecticut and works in New York.
ROBERT LEWIS was born in the Black Mountains in the Brecon Beacons, which is by all accounts a beautiful part of the world. He spent his twenties getting sacked, living in bedsits, drinking in the dodgier pubs of various cities, and caring about the wrong things. Most of this is still going on. He still thinks literature can save him, and he’s almost thirty now. He hasn’t seen it save anyone else. His first novel, The Last Llanelli Train was short listed for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing, along with Zadie Smith and Christopher Brookmyre. His second novel, Swansea Terminal, was published in 2007 and his next novel is scheduled for publication by Serpent’s Tail in 2010.
LAURA LIPPMAN was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at the Baltimore Sun. She has been a full time novelist since 2001. Her novels have won almost every prize given for crime fiction in the United States, including the Edgar, Anthony, Nero Wolfe and Agatha awards, and she has been described by Tess Gerritsen as ‘quite simply one of the best crime novelists writing today.’ In 2008, Laura was asked by New York Times Magazine to write a serialized novel that ran over four months. Her latest novel, Life Sentences, was published in March 2009 and she is currently working on a new book, to be published by Avon in 2010. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, the writer David Simon.
STUART MACBRIDE was born in Dumbarton near Glasgow but grew up in Aberdeen. After a series of jobs including working off-shore, graphic design, voiceovers for local radio and web design he started to write fiction. His first novel, Cold Granite, was short-listed for the International Thriller Writers’ best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. Both Cold Granite, and its follow-up, Dying Light, have made the shortlist of the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award. Stuart won the CWA Dagger In the Library Award for a body of work at the CWA Dagger Awards 2007. Stuart has written five novels, Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin, Flesh House and Blind Eye. Dying Light, Broken Skin and Flesh House were all top ten bestsellers. Stuart won Breakthrough Author of the Year at the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards in 2008.
SHONA MACLEAN was born in Inverness in 1966, and grew up in the Scottish Highlands where her parents were hoteliers. Her father was the younger brother of the novelist Alistair MacLean. She studied History at Aberdeen University, and after a short-lived spell as a trainee tax inspector, spent the next few years in a mix of academic life and raising children, with intermittent scraps of writing in between. Her first attempt at a novel, a murder story set in 1990s Aberdeen, was written on a type-writer and only page 119 survived the six house-moves that followed its suspension to do a Ph.D. Following house move number six, and the birth of child number four, she finally got down to some serious writing, and her first novel, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, was published by Quercus in hardback in July 2008 and released in paperback in May, 2009.
ANDY MANNS is a Crime Scene Investigator with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. His Force area covers the cities of Bristol and Bath as well as coastal and country areas so he has experience of a wide range of crime. He has advised a number of writers on forensics and police procedure and has addressed the Society of Authors in London. In November 2008 he was elected onto the governing council of the Forensic Science Society.
VAL MCDERMID was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and was one of the youngest undergraduates accepted into St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She was a journalist throughout the ’70s and her first book was published in 1984.
Val is the author of twenty-two bestselling novels, which have been translated into thirty languages, and have sold over ten million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She is the creator of clinical psychologist Tony Hill, first seen in her classic The Mermaids Singing, and later portrayed by Robson Green in the hugely popular ITV1 television series, which has now been sold to forty territories worldwide.
BRIAN MCGILLOWAY is the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he is currently Head of English. His first novel, Borderlands, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007′s) most impressive debuts.’ The paperback edition of the second novel in the series, Gallows Lane was published in April of this year, alongside the new Devlin novel, Bleed a River Deep. Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their three sons.
MARK MILLS’s first novel, The Whaleboat House, won the Crime Writers’ Association 2004 John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Crime Novel of the Year. Mark has also written for the screen, including The Reckoning.
In 2007 The Savage Garden was chosen to be a Richard and Judy Summer Reads. It went on to become a number one bestseller. A graduate of Cambridge University, Mark lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.
Praise for The Savage Garden:
‘Full of mysteries and menace…captivating.’ The Times. ‘Mills weaves together an intriguing mix of love, loss and loyalties, making The Savage Garden just as fascinating as his magnificent first novel, The Whaleboat House.’ The Guardian. ‘A mesmerizing piece of writing…’ The Independent
‘An intriguing historical thriller which confirms Mills as a first-class writer.’ The Daily Mail
BARRY NORMAN is the son of the film producer and director Leslie Norman (Dunkirk, The Cruel Sea). He was educated at Highgate School, London. Barry was the show business editor of the Daily Mail until redundancy in 1971 – the nicest thing, he says, the Daily Mail ever did for him. Barry is a contributor to the Times, the Observer, Punch and Cosmopolitan and was the weekly humorous columnist for the Guardian throughout the 1970s.
Presenter of Film 72 – 98 for the BBC, Barry then turned down a further contract and moved on to Sky presenting Barry Norman’s Film Night, from 1998 to 2001. For the BBC, he wrote and presented some thirty hour-long documentaries including The Hollywood Greats, The Film Greats and Talking Pictures. For Radio 4, he has presented the Today programme, was the first chairman of The News Quiz, and has presented Going Places, Breakaway, The Chip Shop and many others. Author of twenty books, ten of which are novels, including The Birddog Tape and Death on Sunset, his latest work is The Bumper Book of Cricket published by Quercus.
GEORGE PELECANOS was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, shoe salesman, electronics salesman, and construction worker before publishing his first novel in 1992. George is the author of sixteen acclaimed crime/noir novels set in and around Washington, D.C. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire and the collections, Unusual Suspects and Best American Mystery Stories of 1997. He is an award-winning journalist and pop-culture essayist who has written for The Washington Post, GQ, and other publications. Esquire magazine called Pelecanos ‘poet laureate of the D.C. crime world.’ George served as producer on several feature films, and is a writer on the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, for which he was nominated for an Emmy. His latest novel is The Way Home.
HELEN PEPPER is from West Yorkshire. Her first job was with the Forensic Science Service, where she worked as an assistant scientific officer. She later moved on to become a ‘scenes of crime’ officer with West Yorkshire Police. She was appointed later as senior scientific support officer with Durham Constabulary. After four years she became a forensic trainer for Durham Constabulary, teaching police officers of all ranks about the value of forensic evidence She then acted as Head of Crime Scene Investigation before leaving Durham to join Teesside University. Helen is a Member of the Forensic Science Society, and has a wealth of experience in the investigation of all crime types, from simple thefts to murders and terrorism.
CARO RAMSAY was born in Glasgow. Unusually for someone who spends her spare time plotting and solving murders, her day job sees her adopting a more healing attitude. Caro is an Osteopath and runs one of the largest multidisciplinary practices in the country, treating both humans and animals.
When her back is behaving itself, Caro is incredibly active – not only is she a marathon runner, but she has also won the Great Scottish Walk (for speed walking 12 miles) and has trekked the Moroccan Atlas mountains whilst guiding a blind person. She is also a contributor to the Scottish Comedy Unit and a painter in pastel. Caro lives with an assortment of rescued animals in a small village in the west of Scotland overlooking Ben Lomond.
DREDA SAY MITCHELL was born in London’s East End in 1965. She has worked as an education consultant and a teacher in both primary and secondary schools. She has a degree in African history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and a MA in education studies. Her first novel, Running Hot, was published in 2004 by the Maia Press and won the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first novel. She loves to travel, with her hot feet taking her as far a field as Cambodia and Laos, to the Lebanon and Ethiopia. She especially loves to relax in Grenada where her family are from. She continues to live in east London with her partner, Tony. Geezer Girls is her third novel.
MANDA SCOTT began writing while still a horse vet in Newmarket. So horses feature prominently in her novels. In The Fire of Rome they have evolved from the home-bred battle mounts of the tribal warriors, in her best-selling Boudica quartet of novels, to the four-in-hand chariot racers favoured by the Emperor Nero. The research for The Fire of Rome took her back to the 1st Century AD, a time when life was simpler, more majestic and far more thrilling than now. She he is currently working on a sequel set around the Siege of Jerusalem. She lives with her partner in Shropshire where she finds time to ride horses, climb rocks and take part in dark-age battle re-enactments as a means to recall what it was like to fight for life and limb.
ZOE SHARP was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran by the northwest coast of England. She freelances as a photo-journalist, mainly for the motoring press, which often sees her hanging out of speeding vehicles. Her professional writing career took off in 2001 with the publication of the first Charlie Fox book, Killer Instinct. It was the start of what is now a bestselling series, earning acclaim and fans across America and the UK. Her latest release is Third Strike. She now lives in Cumbria with her husband, and several treasured motorbikes in lieu of children.
YRSA SIGURDARDOTTIR works as a civil engineer in Reykjavik. She is currently employed as the technical manager of one of the largest hydro construction projects in Europe. Her books for children have won prizes and much acclaim. Her first adult novel, Last Rituals, was a phenomenal bestseller in her native Iceland and went on to become an international sensation, with the publishing rights sold in over thirty languages. It was published in the UK in January 2008 to rave reviews. Her second novel featuring Thora Gudmundsdottir, My Soul to Take, was published in hardback in April 2009.
DAVID SIMON’S Homicide won the Edgar and Anthony awards and became the basis for the NBC award-wining drama. Simon’s second book, The Corner: A Year in the Life of An Inner-City Neighbourhood, co-authored with Edward Burns, was made into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries. Simon was an executive producer and writer for HBO’s Peabody Award-winning series The Wire. He has said that the show is “really about the American city, and about how we live together. It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how … whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.” Simon lives in Baltimore.
CATH STAINCLIFFE was raised in Bradford but moved to Manchester after university, a city which provides a strong background for her stories. Her debut novel, Looking For Trouble, was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association’s John Creasey Award for Best First Crime novel and she is the author of the very popular Sal Kilkenny series. Her work has also been serialised on Woman’s Hour, and she is also a scriptwriter and the creator of ITV’s Blue Murder starring Caroline Quentin.
ANDREW TAYLOR was educated at the universities of Cambridge and London. His award-winning novels include the Richard and Judy bestseller The American Boy, based on Poe’s English boyhood; the Roth Trilogy, which moves backwards in time (filmed for ITV with Charles Dance and Emilia Fox as Fallen Angel); and the Lydmouth Series, set in the 1950s. He is the Spectator’s crime fiction reviewer and also reviews in the Independent. He has won the John Creasey Memorial Award, been short listed for both the Gold Dagger and Edgar, and is the only person to have won the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger twice. His latest book is Bleeding Heart Square, set in London in 1934 and based partly on a celebrated Victorian murder case with which his family has a connection, and partly on the activities of Mosley’s British Fascists. He lives in the Forest of Dean.
JAMES TWINING was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Paris. After graduating from Oxford University with a first class French Literature degree, he worked in Investment Banking for four years before leaving to set up his own company. He sold this three years later, having been named as one of the eight Best of Young British Entrepreneurs in The New Statesman magazine. James lives in London with his family.
CATHI UNSWORTH began her journalistic career at nineteen whilst studying at the London College of Fashion. Headhunted by Melody Maker, she worked there as a freelance feature writer/reviewer for several years before joining Bizarre magazine. Her writing is inspired by the late Derek Raymond, whom she interviewed for Melody Maker and who encouraged her to follow the crime-writing path. She is the editor of London Noir, a collection of London crime stories published by Serpent’s Tail. Her novels are The Not Knowing and The Singer. Her third novel, Bad Penny Blues, has just been published, also by Serpent’s Tail. She lives in west London and regularly reads her work at events all over the city.
NICOLA UPSON was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. She has worked in theatre and as a freelance journalist, and is the author of two non-fiction works and the recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England. Her first novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey – one of the leading authors of Britain’s Golden Age of crime writing. She lives with her partner in Cambridge and spends much of her time in Cornwall, which is the setting for her second Josephine Tey novel, Angel with Two Faces.
DAN WADDELL was born in Pudsey, West Yorkshire in 1972, the son of cult Geordie television darts commentator Sid Waddell. After leaving university Dan trained as a journalist in Sheffield. He took his first job in York as a reporter at a press agency selling stories to national newspapers, highbrow and low. In 1997 he moved to London where he led a schizophrenic life freelancing for several national newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday, the People and the Daily Star. Dan has written several books on sport and popular culture and is the author of the bestselling book that accompanied hit BBC series Who Do You Think You Are. His interest in genealogy and the dark side of our family history, combined with his passion for crime novels, led to the creation of The Blood Detective. Dan now lives in London with his six year old son Dougie.
MARTYN WAITES was born and raised in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. He’s worked as a market trader, bar manager, stand-up comic and professional actor, before becoming a full-time writer. As well as short stories and non-fiction, he has written eight crime novels, several of which have been nominated for awards. He has held two writing residencies, at Huntercombe Young Offenders’ Institution and HMP Chelmsford, and he runs arts-based workshops for socially excluded teenagers. His latest novel is Speak No Evil, the fourth thriller in his highly-acclaimed Joe Donovan series: “He writes in the sort of bovver-boots-and-dustbin-lids staccato prose that doesn’t so much leap off the page as threaten to smack the reader in the mouth.” Laura Wilson, the Guardian.
Martyn now lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and two daughters.
MARTIN WALKER worked for the Guardian for 25 years, serving as Bureau Chief in Moscow and as European Editor in the US. In addition to his prize-winning journalism, he wrote and presented the BBC series Martin Walker’s Russia and Clintonomics. He has written several acclaimed works of non-fiction, including The Cold War: A History, and a historical novel, The Caves of Perigord. Martin is currently the Senior Director of the Global Business Policy Council, Editor Emeritus and international affairs columnist of United Press International He serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Prospect magazine (Britain), the Wilson Quarterly (Washington DC), the World Policy Journal (New York) and Demokratizatsiya (Moscow). Martin spends his summers in his house in the Dordogne.
LEE WEEKS left school at sixteen and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and South East Asia where she became embroiled in a Triad debt and was forced to flee the country. Lee undertakes a huge amount of global research for her books and on a recent trip travelled to the notorious Philippine slum named The Place of the Dead. Her first two novels, The Trophy Taker (April 2008) and The Trafficked (November 2008), were both Sunday Times bestsellers and she is currently working on a new book, to be published by Avon in autumn 2009. She now lives in Devon with her two children and her dogs.
LAURA WILSON was brought up in London and has degrees in English literature from Somerville College, Oxford, and UCL, London. Her six previous novels have been critically acclaimed. Her first, A Little Death, was short listed for both the CWA Ellis Peters Award and the Anthony Award; her fifth novel, The Lover, was short listed for the CWA Ellis Peters Award and the CWA Gold Dagger, and won the French Prix du Polar Europeen; and her sixth, A Thousand Lies, was short listed for the Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger. Her latest novel is The Man Who Wasn’t There, the second to feature WW2 policeman Ted Stratton. She lives in Islington and is the crime fiction reviewer for the Guardian newspaper.