Almost 120 authors from around the world chose their favorite crime novels for Books to Die For. We'll be posting a new set of author profiles every week between now and August 31, so check back regularly for your favorites. Can you guess which books each of these world-famous mystery authors chose as their Book to Die For? You’ll have to buy the book to find out!
Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of the novels Die a Little, The Song Is You,
Queenpin, Bury Me Deep, The End of Everything and her latest, Dare Me, published in 2012. Her writing has appeared in the New
York Times, Salon, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Detroit Noir, Los Angeles Review of Books, LA Noire, Best Crime and Mystery Stories
of the Year and The Speed Chronicles. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction.
John Banville’s novels have variously won the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has also won the Franz Kafka Prize. He has published five crime novels under the pen name Benjamin Black, including the latest, A Death in Summer. A sixth, Vengeance, will be published in August 2012.
Linwood Barclay, a former
columnist for the Toronto Star, is the author of more than a dozen books, including No Time for Goodbye, which has been optioned for film, and more recently, The Accident and Trust Your Eyes. He is married, has two grown
children, and lives near Toronto.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Linda Barnes is an award-winning mystery writer. She has written two acclaimed Boston-set series of mystery novels, one featuring the sometime actor and private investigator Michael Spraggue, and the other centering on the 6’1” redheaded detective Carlotta Carlyle, the most recent of which is Lie Down With the Devil. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Born in Bangor, Northern Ireland, in 1962, Colin Bateman worked as a journalist before publishing Divorcing
Jack in 1994. That novel won the Betty Trask Award, and was subsequently
adapted for film. A prolific author, Bateman has written 21 novels for adults
and an additional eight titles for children and young adults, as well as TV
screenplays, a play, and an opera. He was the chief writer on "Murphy’s Law," a
TV series that ran from 2001 to 2007. The Day of the Jack Russell won the Last
Laugh Award for comic crime fiction in 2009.
M.C. Beaton writes series featuring two different detectives – Agatha Raisin and Hamish
Macbeth, who appeared most recently in Death of a Kingfisher. She started her career as a fiction buyer for John Smith & Sons in Glasgow and wrote theatre reviews for the Daily Mail. She became fashion editor of Scottish
Field and moved on to the Scottish Daily Express as crime reporter, then moving to Fleet Street to be Chief Woman Reporter of the Daily Express. After marriage to journalist and writer Harry Scott Gibbons, and a move to New
York and brief spell working for Rupert Murdoch's Star, she started to write
historical novels, but after more than a hundred of those, switched to detective fiction. The new Agatha Raisin, out in October, is called Hiss &
Hers.
Mark Billingham is one of
the UK’s tallest and most acclaimed crime writers. His series of novels
featuring D.I. Tom Thorne has twice won him the Theakston’s Crime Novel Of The
Year Award, and the books have been nominated for seven CWA Daggers. His debut
novel, Sleepyhead, was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100
books that had shaped the decade. A television series based on the Thorne
novels starred David Morrissey as Tom Thorne and a series based on his
standalone novel In The Dark is in development with the BBC. Mark
Billingham’s latest novels are Rush Of Blood (UK) and The
Demands (US).
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Cara Black is the acclaimed author of the Aimée Leduc series of mystery novels,
of which the most recent is Murder at the Lanterne Rouge. Her next book, Murder Below Montparnasse, will be published in March 2013. She lives in San
Francisco.
Christopher Brookmyre was born in Glasgow in 1968 and educated at Glasgow University. He
worked as a sub-editor in London and Edinburgh prior to the publication of his
first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, which won the First Blood Award in 1996
for the best first crime novel of the year. Fourteen further novels have
followed, garnering him two Sherlock awards and the Bollinger Everyman
Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing in 2006. In 2005 he was named Glasgow
University Young Alumnus of the Year and in 2007 he won the Glenfiddich Spirit
of Scotland Award for writing. It'xs not all wine and roses, however, as he is a St Mirren season-ticket holder.
An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle, her memoir Animal Magnetism, the Mrs. Murphy series, the Sister Jane foxhunting series, her canine mystery series featuring Mags Rogers, and her novels Bingo, Six of One, and Loose Lips. Brown lives in Afton,
Virginia with her cats, hounds, horses, and big red foxes.
Ken Bruen was born in Galway in the west of Ireland. He earned a PhD in Metaphysics at Trinity College, then taught all over the world for 25 years. After a short detention in a Brazilian prison, Bruen moved to London, where his early novels are set. He is best known for his series of Jack Taylor private eye novels set in Galway, the first of which was The Guards
(2001); novels in that series have won Bruen the Shamus Award, the Macavity Award and the Barry Award. The films London Boulevard (2010) and Blitz (2011) were adapted from his novels of the same name. Bruen’s most recent publication is Headstone (2011), the ninth in the Jack Taylor series.
Elisabetta Bucciarelli was born in Milan, Italy. She has written for theatre, film and television. As a mystery/crime writer, she is best known for her critically acclaimed series of novels which are set in Milan and feature Inspector Maria Dolores Vergani, the first of which, Happy Hour, was published in 2005. It was followed by Dalla parte del torto in 2007, Femmina de luxe (2008), Io ti perdono (2009), Ti voglio credere (2010) and Corpi di
scarto (2011). Bucciarelli’s screenplay for the short film Amati Matti (Beloved Matti, 1996) received a "Special Mention" at the 53rd Venice Film Festival.
Caroline (C. J.) Carver was born and brought up in the UK before moving to Australia, where she lived for ten years. She has been a travel writer and long-distance rally driver, heading an all-female crew driving from London to Saigon and London to Cape Town.
Her first novel, Blood Junction, won the CWA Debut Dagger. Since then she has written six more novels, published in the UK, the USA, and translated into over twenty
languages. She lives with her husband – a fighter pilot – near Bath, England.
Paul Charles was born and raised in the Northern Irish countryside. He is the author of the acclaimed Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy series. The most recent title – A Pleasure to Do Death With You – is the 10th in the series. He is also the author of a couple of music-related novels, namely The First of the True Believers (2002), which uses the story of the Beatles as a backdrop, and The Last Dance (2012, set in the legendary Irish Showband scene of the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Charles may be unique in that not only was he around in the 1960s, but he also remembers the decade vividly.
Lee Child turned to writing thrillers after being made redundant by Granada Television in 1995. His debut novel, Killing Floor, appeared in 1997, featuring his series hero, the peripatetic ex-military policeman, Jack Reacher. It won the Macavity and Anthony awards. There are 17 Jack Reacher novels in total, the most recent being A Wanted Man (2012). In
2011, Child won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for 61
Hours (2010). He was elected President of the Mystery Writers of America in
2009. The film Jack Reacher (based upon Child's 2005 novel, One Shot) will be released in December 2012, directed by
Christopher McQuarrie and starring Tom Cruise.
Paul Cleave was born in New Zealand, and wanted to be a novelist for as long as he could remember. His first book, The Cleaner, was published in 2006, a mere six years after it was written, and became one of the biggest-selling books ever to come out of New Zealand. He has since followed it with five more novels, the latest of which is The Laughterhouse. He currently lives in London, at least until the immigration people discover that he’s there.
Ann Cleeves grew up in North Devon and worked as a bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer and reader development officer before writing full time. She has two series of
traditional crime stories – one set in Shetland and one in Northumberland. The first Shetland novel, Raven Black, won the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger. The Northumberland books have been adapted for ITV and star Brenda Blethyn as Vera Stanhope. Her latest novel is The Glass Room.
Called "a hard-boiled poet" by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and "the noir poet laureate" in the Huffington Post, Reed Farrel Coleman has published fifteen novels. He is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year and is a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards. He is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and a founding member of MWA University. He lives with his family on Long Island.
Eoin Colfer is the author of the internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl, which was recently named the public’s favourite Puffin Classic of all time. Other titles include The Wish List, The Supernaturalist and the Legends series for younger readers. Eoin’s books have won numerous awards including The British Children’s Book of the Year, The Irish World Literature Award and The German Children’s Book of the Year. The BBC made a hit series based on his book Half Moon Investigations. In 2009, Eoin was commissioned by Douglas Adams’ estate to write And Another Thing, the concluding episode of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, which became a worldwide bestseller. His first crime novel, Plugged, was released last year on an unsuspecting and largely innocent public.
Max Allan Collins is a novelist, graphic novelist, essayist, songwriter, critic and filmmaker. He has been honored for both his fiction and non-fiction work, and his graphic novel Road to Perdition was the basis for the acclaimed Sam Mendes movie starring Tom Hanks.
Michael Connelly has written 25 novels in 20 years, including his
latest, The Black Box (2012). He is the author behind the long-running Harry
Bosch detective series as well as the more recent Lincoln Lawyer series
featuring defence attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is a former journalist who
covered courts and crime for newspapers in South Florida, where he grew up, and
Los Angeles, where he lived for fifteen years and sets his novels. He currently
resides in Tampa, Florida.
Thomas H. Cook
is the author of 26 novels and two works of non-fiction. He has been
nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award seven times in five different
categories, and his novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best
Novel in 1996. His novel Red Leaves won the Barry Award, and various
other novels have been nominated for the Strand Award, the Hammett Prize, the
Macavity and Anthony Awards, the Silver Dagger of the British Association of
Crime Writers, and France's Grand Prix Litteraire Policier. He has won the
Martin Beck Award of the Swedish Academy of Detection twice, the only author
ever to have done so.
N. J. Cooper worked in publishing before swapping sides to write full time. Her current series of crime novels features forensic psychologist Dr Karen Taylor and is set mainly on the Isle of Wight, where she used to holiday as a child. As the sunniest place in the British Isles it is the ideal setting for the darkness and miseries of serious crime. The first four novels in the series are No Escape, Lifeblood, Face of the Devil, and Vengeance in Mind, published in the summer of 2012.
David Corbett is the author of four novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), and Do They Know I’m Running? (Spinetingler Award, Best Novel – Rising Star Category 2011). David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, with two stories selected for Best American Mystery Stories (2009 and 2011). Mysterious Press/Open Road Media will re-issue his first two novels plus a story collection in May 2012, and Penguin will publish his book on the craft of characterization in early 2013.
Bill Crider is the author of
more than fifty published novels and numerous short stories. He won the Anthony Award for best first mystery novel in 1987 for Too Late to Die. He and his wife, Judy, won the best short story Anthony in 2002 for their story "Chocolate Moose." His story ‘Cranked’ from Damn Near Dead (Busted Flush Press) was nominated for the Edgar award. His latest novel is Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (St. Martin’s). Check out his blog at http://billcrider.blogspot.com.
New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie is a native Texan who writes crime novels set in Britain, featuring Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James. The series has received numerous awards, including Edgar, Macavity, and Agatha nominations, and has been published in more than a dozen countries to
international acclaim. Crombie lives in North Texas with her husband, German
shepherds, and cats, and divides her time between Texas and Great Britain. Her
latest novel, No Mark Upon Her, was published by William Morrow in February 2012. She is currently working on her fifteenth Kincaid/James novel.
A former journalist, folksinger and attorney, Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one best-selling author. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. The author of twenty-nine novels, two collections of short stories and a nonfiction law book, he's received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world. His
latest novels are Carte Blanche, the latest James Bond continuation thriller; Edge;and The Burning Wire. His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. And, yes, the rumors are true: he did appear as a corrupt reporter on his favourite soap opera, "As the World Turns."
David Downing is the author of the "Station" series set in Berlin before, during and after the Second World War. He has also written other novels (The Red Eagles), two works of "faction" (The Moscow Option and Russian Revolution 1985), and many books on military history, rock music, cinema and the history of football. A Londoner, he has also lived in the US, and travelled extensively in Europe, Asia and Latin America. He is currently
developing a new series of novels set before, during and after the First World
War.
Ruth Dudley Edwards has been a teacher, marketing executive and civil servant and is a prize-winning biographer as well as an historian, journalist and broadcaster. The targets of her satirical crime novels (which have been described as ‘marvellously entertaining and iconoclastic’) include the civil service, gentlemen’s clubs, a Cambridge college, the House of Lords, the Church of England, publishing, literary prizes and politically correct Americans. In 2008 she won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award for Murdering
Americans. Killing the Emperors is about conceptual art and
will be published in the autumn of 2012.
Cristina Fallarás is a journalist and writer who lives in Barcelona. She has been an editor of street interviews, a reporter, a radio and television writer, an opinion columnist, a writer, a section chief, and deputy managing editor. She was part of the design and writing of the daily newspaper DNA project, of which she is co-founder and deputy director. She is also co-founder the online newspaper Factual. She currently directs the opinion page and the editing of Sigueleyendo.es, serves as a consultant on communications issues for the publishing sector and the media, and keeps a blog in the Ellas section of El Mundo. She is the author of five novels, including Thus Died the Poet Guadeloupe (2009), a finalist for the international Dashiell Hammett Prize, and The Lost Girls (2011), which won the L’H Confidencial de Novela Negra prize and the Director's Prize at la Semana Negra de Gijón. She is a frequent contributor to anthologies, and her story "The History of a Scar" was included in Akashic Books' Barcelona Noir.
Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including Buried Secrets, the second novel to feature "private spy" Nick Heller; Killer Instinct, winner of the Thriller for Best Novel; and Paranoia, now filming as a major motion picture. His first novel, The Moscow Club, was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best spy novels of all time. A summa cum laude graduate of Yale, Joe did graduate work at Harvard’s Russian Research Center. He lives in Boston with his wife, their teenage daughter, and a neurotic golden retriever.
People who see Sebastian Fitzek for the first time say that he doesn’t look anything like a psychothriller author, but that’s definitely his passion. Sebastian Fitzek, born in 1971 in Berlin (where he still lives), is one of the most-read thriller authors in Germany, despite his harmless appearance. His books are now read in twenty-five countries, including the United States (with his first novel, Therapy), even though he originally wanted to be a drummer, a tennis player, or a veterinarian. In each of these cases he failed because he was all thumbs, as he admits himself. He is married to Sandra, and is the father of two small children.
Australian novelist Kathryn Fox is a medical practitioner with a specialty in forensic medicine. Her debut novel, Malicious Intent, was published in 2005, featuring her series heroine, Dr. Anya Crichton. Subsequent novels include Without Consent (2006), Blood Born (2009), and Death Mask (2010). Kathryn has recently set up the “Read For Life” project, which aims to promote literacy by sending children’s books to remote communities. Along with Kathy Reichs, Linda Fairstein, and Robin Burcell, she campaigns against domestic violence toward women.
Tana French’s first book, In the Woods, swept all of the main mystery fiction awards, including the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, when it was published in 2007. She has since published three further novels, the latest of which is Broken Harbour.
Meg Gardiner is the author of ten novels, including the Evan Delaney series, the Jo Beckett novels, and the stand-alone thriller Ransom River. Her novel China Lake won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. The Dirty Secrets Club won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for best procedural novel of the year and was chosen as one of Amazon’s top ten thrillers of 2008. Gardiner practiced law in Los Angeles and taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lives near London.
USA TODAY best-selling author Alison Gaylin began her career with the Edgar-nominated Hide Your Eyes and has since been published in the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, and Japan. Her latest book, And She Was, is the first in a new series featuring Brenna Spector, a PI blessed—and cursed—with perfect memory. Its sequel, The Murder Mile, is due out in the winter of 2013. A graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Alison lives in upstate New York with her husband and daughter.
Jason Goodwin has published four crime novels set in 19th century Istanbul and featuring the eunuch investigator, Yashim. The first, The Janissary Tree (2006), won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2007. The Snake Stone (2007), The Bellini Card (2008) and An Evil Eye (2011) followed. Goodwin has also published non-fiction titles. On Foot to the Golden Horn, his account of walking from Poland to Turkey, won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993. Goodwin has also published a history of the Ottoman Empire, Lords of the Horizons (1999).
Born in Brooklyn in 1971, Sara Gran is the author of the novels Come Closer (2003) and Dope (2006). Before making a living as a writer, Ms. Gran had many jobs, primarily with books, working at Manhattan bookstores like Shakespeare & Co., the Strand, and Housing Works, and selling used and rare books on her own. Her most recent novel, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (2011) is set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and features the “strange and brilliant” private eye Claire DeWitt.
Born in Paris, Jean-Christophe Grangé was a journalist before turning to write fiction. The author of nine novels in all, he made his debut in 1994 with Le Vol des cigognes (Flight of the Storks). His most recent offering is Le passager (2011), but he is probably best known for 1999’s Les rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers), which he adapted with director Mathieu Kassovitz for the film Les rivières pourpres (2000), which starred Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel.
Allan Guthrie is an award-winning Scottish crime writer. His debut novel, Two-Way Split, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award and went on to win the Theakston's Crime Novel Of The Year. He is the author of four other novels, Kiss Her Goodbye (nominated for an Edgar), Hard Man, Savage Night and Slammer, and three novellas, Kill Clock, Killing Mum and Bye Bye Baby, a Top Ten Kindle best-seller. He's also co-founder of a digital publishing company, Blasted Heath, and a literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates.
James W. Hall is the author of seventeen novels, several collections of poetry, short stories, and essays, and the newly released Hit Lit, an examination of the biggest best sellers of the twentieth century and a dozen things they have in common.
Denise Hamilton is a Los Angeles native whose crime novels have been short-listed for the Edgar and the Creasey Dagger. She is also editor of the two-volume anthology Los Angeles Noir, which won the Edgar Award.
Sophie Hannah is the author of seven best-selling psychological thrillers, the most recent of which is Kind of Cruel. Her novels are published in twenty-five countries, and two have so far been adapted for ITV1 and broadcast under the series title Case Sensitive. Sophie is also an award-winning, best-selling poet, and in 2007 was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize for her collection Pessimism for Beginners (Carcanet).
Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author, is a voracious reader. She had a hard time picking which book to write about for this collection. Her most recent novel is the 12th in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Deadlocked, and she's edited five anthologies with her buddy Toni L.P. Kelner. This year's anthology is An Apple for the Creature. In 2013, the first installment of the graphic novel she's writing with Christopher Golden, Cemetery Girl, will be on the shelves.
Although born and raised in the United States, Erin Hart uses Ireland as the setting for her series of mystery novels featuring pathologist Nora Gavin and archaeologist Cormac Maguire. That choice was inspired by a lifelong fascination with Ireland’s history and culture, and by the sad, true tale of a beautiful red-haired girl whose perfectly preserved head was discovered after being hidden for centuries in a desolate Irish bog. Erin and her husband, Irish button accordion master Paddy O’Brien, live in Minnesota, and travel frequently to Ireland. Erin’s latest novel is The Book of Killowen.
Ever since he was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing in 2007, John Harvey has been trying, unsuccessfully, to shrug off the implication that everything, henceforth, is downhill. No matter how many push-ups, how many twelve-mile yomps across the South Downs, the label “veteran crime writer” clings to him like a shroud. His latest effort to disprove the onset of senility is the novel Good Bait, published in 2012 to the sound of muted applause and the disgust—well earned, one hopes—of the Daily Mail.
Gar Anthony Haywood is the Shamus and Anthony Award–winning author of twelve crime novels and numerous short stories. He has written six mysteries featuring African-American private investigator Aaron Gunner; two starring amateur sleuths Joe and Dottie Loudermilk; and four stand-alone thrillers.
Lauren Henderson, who also writes under the name Rebecca Chance, was born in London and educated at Cambridge, where she studied English literature. A journalist for newspapers and magazines before she turned her hand to fiction, she published her debut novel, Dead White Female, the first of her Sam Jones mysteries, in 1995. Alongside the Sam Jones novels, Lauren has also written crime titles for young adults, romantic comedies, and a non-fiction title, Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating. Lauren has been described as both the Dorothy Parker and Betty Boop of British crime fiction.
Chuck Hogan is the New York Times bestselling
author of several acclaimed novels, including Devils in Exile and Prince of
Thieves, which was awarded the Hammett Prize for "literary excellence in the field of crime writing," and was adapted into the film The Town, directed
by and starring Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, and Jon Hamm. He is also the co-author, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth),
of the international bestselling Strain Trilogy, published in twenty-nine languages. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times and ESPN The Magazine, and his short fiction has twice been
anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories annual.
Katherine Howell is a former paramedic and the best-selling author of five crime novels featuring paramedics alongside Sydney police detective Ella Marconi. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work is published in multiple countries and languages, in print, ebook, and audio form. She holds two degrees in writing, is studying female doctor investigators in crime fiction for her PhD at the University of Queensland, and teaches writing and editing. She lives in Queensland with her partner, who owns a bookshop. Her latest book is Silent Fear.
Declan Hughes is the author of the Ed Loy PI series: The Wrong Kind of Blood; The Color of Blood; The Price of Blood; All The Dead Voices and City of Lost Girls. His books have been nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, Macavity, Theakston's Old Peculier and CWA Dagger awards. The Wrong Kind of Blood won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel, and, in France, the Le Point prize for Best European Crime Novel. Declan is also an award-winning playwright, and the co-founder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. His plays include Digging For Fire, Twenty Grand and Shiver.
Arlene Hunt is the author of seven crime novels, five of which feature the popular QuicK Investigation duo, John Quigley and Sarah Kenny. She is also the co-owner of Portnoy Publishing. She lived in Barcelona for five years and now resides in Dublin. Her books have been translated into three languages and her current novel, The Chosen, a standalone set in the US, was voted TV3’s Book of the Month for November 2011. An earlier novel, Undertow (2008), was short-listed for best crime novel at the Irish Book Awards. Arlene has also contributed to many anthologies, including Down These Green Streets, Requiems for the Departed and Console.
Peter James is best known for his series of Roy Grace police procedurals, which are set in Brighton on England’s south coast. The first, Dead Simple, was published in 2005; the most recent is Not Dead Yet (2012). James made his debut in 1981 with the standalone title Dead Letter Drop. In total, he has published 26 titles, with a collection of short stories to be published in 2013. Peter James won the Krimi-Blitz award for Best Crime Writer in Germany in 2005, and the Prix Polar in 2006. He won the Crime Novel of the Year Award in the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards 2011.
Paul Johnston was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but spends much of his time in Greece. He is the author of three crime series. The first, featuring Quint Dalrymple, is set in a futuristic version of his home city (CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Body Politic). The second stars half-Greek, half-Scots missing persons specialist Alex Mavros (Sherlock Award for Best Detective Novel for The Last Red Death). In the third he lost it completely and turned crime writer Matt Wells into a hard-boiled avenger (The Death List, etc.). His latest novel is The Silver Stain.
Laurie R. King has been a published and prize-winning author for more than twenty years, and has written more than twenty novels, including her immensely popular and well-loved series of novels featuring Mary Russell, one-time apprentice and now wife to Sherlock Holmes, the latest of which is Pirate King. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Michael Koryta is the author of four novels in the Lincoln Perry series, the first of which, Tonight I Said Goodbye, was published in 2004 and won the Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel Award, and the Great Lakes Book Award for Best Mystery. He has also published four non-series novels: Envy the Night (2008) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller, while So Cold the River (2010), The Cypress House (2011), and The Ridge (2011) were all New York Times Notable Books. His most recent novel is The Prophet (2012).
William Kent Krueger writes the New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor mystery series. After studying briefly at Stanford University, Kent set out to experience the real world. Over the next twenty years, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He lives in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves, and does all his creative writing in a lovely little coffee shop near his home. The twelfth novel in his series, Trickster’s Point, will be released in the fall of 2012.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than 40 novels in a variety of genres, including mystery/crime, adventure, Western and horror. Among the many prizes he has won are an Edgar Award (in 2000, for The Bottoms), a Booklist Editor’s Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the "Shot in the Dark" International Crime Writers’ Award and the Critics’ Choice Award. He has also won eight Bram Stoker Awards. He is best known, in mystery/crime terms, for his "Hap and Leonard" series of novels, of which there have been ten to date. Joe R. Lansdale is also a member of the Martial Arts Hall of Fame.
Jens Lapidus is a Swedish criminal defense lawyer. He published his debut novel, Snabba cash (Easy Money), in 2006. He has since published two more titles: Aldrig fucka upp (Never Fuck Up, 2008) and Livet deluxe (Life Deluxe, 2011). The three novels comprise the “Stockholm Noir Trilogy.” Snabba cash was published in English as Easy Money in 2012. The novel was adapted for film in Sweden in 2010, directed by Daniel Espinosa.
Dennis Lehane is the author of a bunch of books, some of which he likes, including Mystic River, The Given Day, and Live by Night, a gangster novel to be published in October 2012 by William Morrow in the United States and Little, Brown in the UK and Ireland. He’s wanted to write a gangster novel since he was eight years old; now that the box is checked, he has no idea what to do next to keep people from realizing how completely full of shite he is. Maybe he’ll take up origami. While hang gliding. Until then, he lives in Boston and St. Petersburg, Florida, with one wife, two daughters, a vicious beagle, and a sweet but excessively flatulent English bulldog named Marlon Brando.
Regarded by his peers as a “writer’s writer,” the best-selling and critically acclaimed Elmore “Dutch” Leonard is the author of forty-six novels. Originally a writer of Westerns, he was first published in 1953 with The Bounty Hunters. He turned to writing crime novels in 1969, with The Big Bounce (The Moonshine War was published in the same year), and has continued to write crime novels since. His most recent novel is Raylan (2012). He was given his nickname in high school by a classmate, who named him after the Washington Senators’ pitcher Emil “Dutch” Leonard.
Diane Wei Liang was born in Beijing. She spent part of her childhood with her parents in a labor camp in a remote region of China. A graduate of Beijing University, Diane took part in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. She has an MBA and a PhD in business administration from Carnegie Mellon University. She was an award-winning business professor in the United States and the UK. Diane is the author of Lake With No Name (memoir) and three novels: The Eye of Jade, Paper Butterfly, and The House of Golden Spirit. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in London.
Laura Lippman, like James M. Cain, is a registered Democrat. She drinks.
Bill Loehfelm is the author of three novels, most recently The Devil She Knows, as well as Fresh Kills (2008) and Bloodroot (2009). All three novels are set in Bill’s hometown of Staten Island, NYC. Bill moved to New Orleans in 1997. He currently lives in New Orleans with his wife A.C. Lambeth, who is a writer and yoga instructor, and their two dogs. When not writing, Bill practices yoga, plays the drums, cheers the Saints, eats oysters, and gets tattoos, all with varying frequency and success.
Lisa Lutz is the author of the Spellman series of comedic crime novels (beginning with The Spellman Files) and Heads You Lose (with David Hayward). She lives in rural New York.
Shane Maloney is the author of a series of six novels featuring Murray Whelan, a political fixer and accidental detective. They are written in Australian English. Like it or lump it. He is a winner of the Ned Kelly Award. In 2009, the Australian Crime Writers Association presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award and a halfway decent bottle of red. Anybody knowing the whereabouts of the wine should contact the author. Some of the Murray Whelan books have been published in translation in French, Finnish, German, Japanese, and American. Two were filmed and directed by Sam Neill. Maloney lives in Melbourne, a city on the way to nowhere.
Liza Marklund was born in 1962 in the small village of Pålmark, close to the Arctic Circle in Sweden. She is an author, journalist, columnist, publisher, and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Since her debut in 1995, Liza Marklund has written eleven novels and two non-fiction books. She co-wrote the international best-seller The Postcard Killers with James Patterson, making her the second Swedish author ever to reach No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Her crime novels featuring the gutsy reporter Annika Bengtzon, the latest of which is Last Will, have sold more than 13 million copies in 30 languages to date.
Margaret Maron has served as national president of Sisters in Crime, the American Crime Writers League, and Mystery Writers of America. Winner of several major mystery awards, her Judge Deborah Knott novels are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary Southern literature. In 2008, she received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the state’s highest civilian honour. Her first series, set against the NYC art world and now available as eBooks, featured Lt. Sigrid Harald, NYPD.
J. Wallis Martin (PhD St. Andrews) is publishing director of The Edgar Allan Press Ltd. Her novels have been published internationally, and adapted for the screen. She lives in Bristol.
Val McDermid is best known for her novels featuring Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, the first of which, The Mermaids Singing, appeared in 1995. In all there have been seven novels in the series, most recently The Retribution (2011). McDermid made her debut in 1987 with Report for Murder, the first in the six-book Lindsay Gordon series. Another six-book series features the private eye Kate Brannigan. McDermid has also written six stand-alone titles. The Mermaids Singing won the CWA’s Gold Dagger in 1996. The Torment of Others (2004) won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Fiction Book of the Year Award in 2006. In 2010, Val McDermid was awarded the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger in recognition of her life’s work.
John McFetridge was born, and grew up, in Greenfield Park, on the south shore of Montreal, and spent a lot of time on the Main before moving to Toronto where he now lives and sets his novels: Dirty Sweet, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Swap, and Tumblin’ Dice. John’s upcoming novel, Black Rock, takes place in Montreal in 1970.
Brian McGilloway was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1974. He is currently head of English in St. Columb’s College in the city. His Inspector Devlin novels have been short-listed for a CWA Dagger, the Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year, and the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, while the first Lucy Black novel, Little Girl Lost, was awarded the McCrea Literary Award by the University of Ulster in 2011. The fifth Devlin novel, The Nameless Dead, was published earlier this year. Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their four children.
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He moved to the New York in the early ’90s where he worked in bars, road gangs and construction crews. In 2001 he moved to Denver, Colorado where he taught high school English. His debut crime novel, Dead I Well May Be, was short-listed for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. His 2010 novel, Fifty Grand, won the Spinetingler Award and was long-listed for the Theakston British Crime Novel Prize. His most recent book is The Cold Cold Ground.
Eoin McNamee made his debut in 1994 with Resurrection Man, a novel set in Belfast during the Troubles, and among the notorious Shankill Butchers, which set the tone for his fictionalized versions of recent Irish history. He has also published The Ultras (2004), and 12:23 (2007), and the first two parts of a proposed trilogy: The Blue Tango (2001), which was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and Orchid Blue (2010). McNamee has also written a series of spy thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed, featuring the intelligence officer Jack Valentine.
Élmer Mendoza is a professor of literature at the Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa in Mexico and a member of the Colegio de Sinaloa and the Mexican Academy of the Spanish language. Between 1978 and 1995 he published five books of short stories, and two volumes of essays, and his first novel, A Solitary Murderer, was published in 1999. He has since published six more novels, including two featuring the character of policeman Edgar "Lefty" Mendieta, and won the Tusquets International Prize in 2007 for his novel Silver Bullets. He is regarded as the patriarch of north Mexican crime literature, one of the most skilled users of the slang language of Mexican criminality as a literary language, and a specialist in the subgenre of narcocultura, which examines the impact of the drug trade on Mexican society.
South African crime author Deon Meyer is a former journalist, advertising copywriter, Internet manager, and brand strategist. He has published nine novels and two short-story collections in Afrikaans. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages worldwide. Accolades include Le Grand Prix International de Littérature Policière, the Deutsche Krimi Preis, the Swedish Martin Beck Award, and a Barry Award in the United States. Deon lives near Cape Town with his wife, Anita, and their four children. He is passionate about South Africa, Mozart, motorcycles, cooking, and Free State Cheetahs and Springbok rugby.
Dreda Say Mitchell is a novelist, broadcaster, journalist, and freelance education consultant who describes herself as a “complete busybody.” She is the author of five novels. Her debut, Running Hot, was awarded the CWA’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best first crime novel in 2005. She has appeared on BBC television’s Newsnight, The Review Show, and Canadian television’s Sun News Live, and has presented Open Book on BBC Radio 4. She chaired the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, Europe’s biggest crime festival, in 2011. Her commitment to, and passion for, raising the life chances of working-class children in education has been called inspirational and life changing.
Chris Mooney is the internationally best-selling author of the Darby McCormick series and the stand-alone Remembering Sarah,
which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Foreign rights
in the Darby McCormick series have been sold in over twenty territories.
The Killing House, his latest novel, is the first book featuring
former profiler, and now the nation’s most wanted fugitive, Malcolm
Fletcher. Mooney lives in Boston, where he is at work on the next Darby
McCormick thriller.
Eddie Muller’s 2002 fiction debut, The Distance, earned the Best First Novel Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. His books on film noir, including Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, as well as dozens of DVD commentaries, have earned him the mantle "The Czar of Noir." Muller produces and hosts NOIR CITY: The San Francisco Film Noir Festival, the largest noir retrospective in the United States, and he is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, which raises funds to restore and preserve films representative of "America’s noir heritage."
Marcia Muller has authored more than thirty-five novels, three of them in collaboration with her husband, Bill Pronzini. Together, the Mulzinis—as their friends call them—have coedited a dozen short-story anthologies and a five-pound nonfiction book on the genre, which can also be used as a doorstop. In 2005 Muller was named a Grand Master, the highest award of the Mystery Writers of America. Pronzini was given the same honor in 2008, making them the only living couple to share the title (Ross Macdonald and Margaret Millar were similarly honored). The Mulzinis live in Sonoma County, California, in a house full of cats and books. Muller’s next Sharon McCone novel, Looking for Yesterday, will be published by Grand Central Publishing in October 2012.
A gray-eyed London rat by birth, Barbara Nadel lives and works in a state of chaos. Oddly, she is married and has a wonderful son. Author of the Istanbul-based Inspector İkmen crime series, her latest book, Dead of Night, has the nicotine-stained Turkish detective traveling to Detroit. Also out this year is the first book in her new London series, entitled A Private Business. Based around an Anglo-Bangladeshi private investigation office in East London, A Private Business exposes a side of the Olympics site that isn’t about sport. Barbara likes cats, green drinks, and wandering around London.
Reggie Nadelson was born, raised, and lives in downtown Manhattan. Once in a while she leaves New York and visits other places, and has lived in London, Paris, and Northern California. A journalist by trade, she has worked for newspapers and magazines in London and New York, and is currently a travel writer for Travel + Leisure. Her 1991 book, Comrade Rockstar, has been sold to Tom Hanks who has plans to turn it into a feature film. Blood Count, her ninth mystery in the Artie Cohen series, which takes place in Harlem, was published in 2010. Most of her books are set in New York because she doesn’t really know about much else, though she likes the movies a lot, and has worked on a couple of documentaries for the BBC. In Manhattan ’62, her forthcoming novel, her new hero is Detective Patrick Arthur John Declan Wynne. He is Irish. He likes Irish whiskey a lot.
Jo Nesbø is a Norwegian author best known for his police procedurals featuring Detective Harry Hole. He made his debut in 1997 with Flaggermusmannen (The Bat), although the first of his novels to be translated into English was Marekors (2003), published in translation as The Devil’s Star (2005). In total there are nine Harry Hole novels, the most recent of which is Phantom (2012). A film adapted from his stand-alone novel Hodejegerne (2008), aka Headhunters (2011), was released in 2012. Nesbø has won a slew of literary prizes in Scandinavia, including Best Norwegian Crime Novel Ever Written for The Redbreast in 2004.
Northern Ireland author Stuart Neville’s debut novel, The Ghosts of Belfast (aka The Twelve), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/ Thriller in 2010, the Spinetingler “New Voice” award, also in 2010, Le Prix Mystère de la Critique du Meilleur Roman Étranger, and the Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger. The novel was further nominated for the Dilys Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, and the Macavity Award. Neville’s second novel, Collusion (2010), was also short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller. His current offering is Stolen Souls (2011).
Mike Nicol is an author, journalist, editor, and online creative writing teacher. His writing life started with the publication of a slim volume of poems, Among the Souvenirs, in 1979. He has written a number of novels and nonfiction works, including a short biography of Nelson Mandela. In recent years he has turned to crime fiction with the publication of his Revenge Trilogy: Payback, Killer Country, and Black Heart. His latest book is Monkey Business: The Murder of Anni Dewani: The Facts, The Fiction, the Spin.
Carol O’Connell writes: "I was raised to be a painter, earned
a degree in fine arts, and then took a wrong turn somewhere. Failing in my
ambition to live as a cliché starving artist and die in a Manhattan gutter, I
became a novelist and jettisoned the rent-money job after the success of my
first book, Mallory’s Oracle, in 1994.
I write every day – but never on Facebook. There’s no website or Twitter
account, either, and my cell has a text blocker. I agreed to write this piece
in exchange for a bottle of wine, and that should fill in the blanks on bad
habits."
Journalist and writer Margie Orford is at the forefront of a new generation of South African mystery writers. She has written four acclaimed novels featuring criminal profiler Dr. Clare Hart, the latest of which is Gallows Hill. She is executive vice president of South African PEN and a patron of both the Rape Crisis Trust in Cape Town and Little Hands Trust, a children’s book charity. She lives in Cape Town.
Cuban author Leonardo Padura Fuentes is best known for his quartet of Havana-set novels Las cuatro estaciones (The Four Seasons), which feature Inspector Mario Conde and are also referred to as the Havana Quartet. The first in the series, Pasado perfecto (aka Havana Blue), was published in 1991; the final novel, Paisaje de otoño (Havana Black) won the 1998 Premio Hammett, awarded by the Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policíacos. Padura is the author of nine novels in total. The most recent, El hombre que amaba a los perros (The Man Who Loved Dogs), was published in 2009.
Sara Paretsky is a novelist and essayist best known for her private eye V. I. Warshawski, who helped change the treatment of women in crime fiction. Paretsky’s awards include the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association, the Edgar Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America, and Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year.
David Peace was declared one of the Best Young British Novelists by Granta in 2003. The four novels of his Red Riding Quartet were condensed into a three-part TV series broadcast by Channel 4 in 2009. He followed the Quartet with GB84 (2004), a fictional account of the miners’ strikes of 1984-85, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2005. Peace subsequently published The Damned Utd (2006), about Brian Clough’s ill-fated tenure at Leeds United. Tokyo: Year Zero (2007) and Occupied City (2009) are the first two books of a proposed Tokyo Trilogy. David Peace currently lives in
Japan.
George Pelecanos is the author of eighteen novels and served as a writer/ producer on HBO’s The Wire, The Pacific, and Treme. He has a full head of hair, searing blue eyes, and drives a special-edition Mustang modeled on the car driven by McQueen in Bullitt. Also, he’s married, with three kids, two dogs, and a house in the suburbs. So much for the myth of the roguish independent author.
Louise Penny writes the Armand Gamache crime novels, set in Quebec. Her books have made international best-seller lists including the New York Times and Times of London. She's won the British Dagger and the Canadian Arthur Ellis as well as the American Anthony, Barry, Macavity and Nero awards. She's the only writer in history to win the coveted Agatha Award four years in a row. Her books are translated in 23 languages. Louise lives in Quebec with her husband Michael and their dogs.
Anne Perry has published an astonishing number of mystery novels, in addition to young adult fiction, fantasy writing, and assorted short stories. Her two principal series, both historical, revolve around couples: the Monk novels are set in the earlier Victorian era, and concern the amnesiac investigator William Monk and the woman who eventually becomes his wife, the nurse Hester Latterly; the Pitt novels, meanwhile, feature the London police inspector Thomas Pitt, a man of humble origins, and his upper-class wife, Charlotte, and are set at the end of the nineteenth century. Morality and justice, sin and repentance, redemption and the possibility of forgiveness, are all recurring themes in her work.
The son of a mechanic and a librarian, Gary Phillips draws on his experiences as an inner city activist, union organizer, state director of a political action committee and deliverer of dog cages in writing his tales of chicanery and malfeasance. He has won the Chester Himes Award for his fiction and laments that, even after all these years, his poker playing hasn’t improved. He will enjoy his payment of whiskey for his essay in Books To Die For while smoking a few semi-expensive cigars and contemplating the universe.
Scott Phillips lives in St. Louis, Missouri, for reasons he can no longer articulate but which once must have made sense to him. He is the author of any number of depraved books, including The Ice Harvest, made into a film of the same name by Harold Ramis, and most recently the novel The Adjustment, as well as a collection of short stories, Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes.
In a career spanning nearly half a century, Bill Pronzini has published 75 novels, four non-fiction books, and 350 short stories, articles, and essays. His awards include a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, the organization’s highest honor, presented in 2008; three Shamuses, two for best novel, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America; and France's Grand Prix de la Litterature Policiere for Snowbound (1988). Two other suspense novels, A Wasteland of Strangers and The Crimes of Jordan Wise, were nominated for the Hammett Prize in 1997 and 2006 respectively by the International Crime Writers Association. His most recent novel is Hellbox (Forge, 2012), the 36th in his well-regarded "Nameless Detective" series.
Ian Rankin is one of Britain’s leading mystery writers, and a major figure in the "Tartan Noir" school of Scottish crime writing. He is the author of more than thirty books, the majority featuring the character of Detective Inspector John Rebus, set in and around the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, in which Rankin still lives. Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus novel was published in 1987; the 16th, and so far final Rebus book, Exit Music, appeared in 2007, and Rankin has since followed it with two books featuring an internal affairs investigator, Inspector Malcolm Fox. He has won every major mystery award, including the 2004 Edgar for Best Novel for Resurrection Men.
Kathy Reichs is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Carolina. As a forensic anthropologist, she testified at the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her first novel to feature the series heroine Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, also a forensic anthropologist,
was Déjà Dead (1997), which won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. She has subsequently published 17 novels featuring Tempe Brennan, the most recent being Bones Are Forever (2012). Reichs produces a TV series called "Bones," which is loosely based on Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist with a sideline in writing novels about a fictional character called Kathy Reichs.
English author Phil Rickman published his debut, Candlenight, in 1991. The critics acclaimed him as the next great British horror writer, a reputation enhanced by his following four titles. In 1998, Rickman published The Wine of Angels, the first of a long series of novels that blended crime narratives and the supernatural, and featured Merrily Watkins, a Church of England priest and exorcist. There have been eleven titles in the series to date, the most recent being The Secrets of Pain (2011). Rickman also writes under the pseudonyms Will Kingdom and Thom Madley. In 2010 he published the first of a proposed historical series, The Bones of Avalon.
Peter Robinson was born in Yorkshire, England, which provides the setting for his award-winning and bestselling series of detective novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. The series has been successfully adapted for television, featuring Stephen Tompkinson as Banks. He divides his time between Yorkshire and Canada.
Michael Robotham is a former journalist and ghostwriter, whose psychological thrillers have been published in 22 languages. His career highlights include uncovering Stalin’s Hitler files, interviewing Jackie Collins in a bubble bath and getting into George Michael’s shorts. Michael can most often be found on Sydney’s northern beaches where he wrestles with words in a "mezzanine of misery" (room with a view) and funds the extravagant lifestyles of a wife and three teenage daughters.
M.J. Rose is the internationally bestselling author of twelve novels, including The Book of Lost Fragrances (Atria/S&S), and three non-fiction books on marketing. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the '80s in advertising, has a commercial in the NYC’s MOMA and in 2005 created the first marketing company for authors – Authorbuzz.com. The television series "Past Life" was based on her Reincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of the International Thriller Writers as well as co-founder of Peroozal.com and BookTrib.com. Rose lives in Connecticut with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.
S.J. Rozan, a life-long New Yorker, is the author of thirteen novels and three dozen short stories. She's an Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero and Macavity winner, as well as a recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon award. S.J. has been Guest of Honor at a number of fan conventions and in 2003 was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She's served on the boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and as President of Private Eye Writers of America. She leads writing workshops and lectures widely. Her latest book is Ghost Hero.
James Sallis is perhaps best known for the Lew Griffin mysteries, set in New Orleans, and the novel Drive, which became an acclaimed film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. He has published 14 novels, more than a hundred stories, a number of collections of poetry, a translation of Raymond Queneau's novel Saint Glinglin, three books on music, and reams of criticism on literature of every sort. Once editor of the landmark sf magazine New Worlds in London ("Way, way back in the day"), he contributes a regular books column to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction.
Yrsa Sigurdardottir is an international bestselling crime writer from Iceland. Yrsa has written six books in a series about her protagonist, the lawyer Thóra Godmundsdóttir. The fourth novel in this series, The Day is Dark, was recently published in the UK by Hodder and the fifth, Someone to Watch Over Me, is due for publication this fall. Yrsa’s recent standalone novel, I Remember You, has been nominated for the Scandinavian crime fiction prize, the Glass Key, and is scheduled for publication in the UK in 2013. It is currently being adapted for the big screen.
Karin Slaughter is the author of several number one bestsellers. A passionate supporter of libraries, Slaughter spearheaded the Save the Libraries campaign to help raise funds for ailing libraries. She has donated all income from her e-short story "Thorn in My Side" to both the American and British library systems. For her 12th novel Criminal, Slaughter exhaustively researched racial and gender politics in the Atlanta police department during the 1970s, resulting in a deeply personal exploration of her hometown and her country during a period of enormous social change.
Mehmet Murat Somer was born in Ankara, Turkey, and is the author of the acclaimed Hop-Çiki-Yaya crime novels set in Istanbul. The series, which consists of six novels so far, features an unnamed amateur sleuth who also happens to be a transvestite. The latest to be published in English is The Serenity Murders.
Although based in the state of Maine, Julia Spencer-Fleming is best known for her series of mystery novels set in the small upstate New York town of Millers Kill, featuring the unusual central character of Clare Fergusson, an Episcopal cleric, alongside the town’s chief of police, Russ Van Alstyne. The first novel in the series, In the Bleak Midwinter, swept most of the major mystery awards when it was published in 2002.
Kelli Stanley lives in Hammett's San Francisco, where she writes the Miranda Corbie series, the first of which, City of Dragons, won the Macavity Award for best historical mystery and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Shamus Award, the Bruce Alexander Award and the Reviewer’s Choice Award. City of Secrets is the sequel; City of Ghosts is forthcoming. Her Miranda Corbie short story "Children's Day" was published in the ITW best-seller First Thrills, while "Memory Book" is available as an e-story from Macmillan. Kelli writes a second series set in ancient Rome, the latest of which is The Curse-Maker. Nox Dormienda, her debut novel, won the Bruce Alexander Award.
Andrew Taylor’s novels include the best-seller The American Boy, chosen by The Times as one of the top ten crime novels of the decade; the Roth Trilogy (filmed for TV as "Fallen Angel"); the Lydmouth Series; Bleeding Heart Square; and The Anatomy of Ghosts. He has most recently been awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. He has written another novel but can’t decide what to call it. He is The Spectator’s crime fiction
reviewer.
Martyn Waites is the Newcastle-born author of the critically acclaimed Joe Donovan mystery series. More recently, he and his wife, Linda, have collaborated, under the pseudonym of Tania Carver, on a hugely successful series of novels featuring Phil Brennan of the Major Incident Squad and psychologist Marina Esposito, the most recent of which is Choked.
Minette Walters has published 12 full-length novels since 1992. Specializing in psychological thrillers, and eschewing recurring series characters, she has won every major mystery award, including the Edgar and CWA Gold Dagger, and her work has been translated into more than 35 languages. Many of her novels are set in her adopted county of Dorset, and several have been adapted for television.
Joseph Wambaugh is the author of twenty-one books, both fiction and nonfiction, since 1971 when he was a detective sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Laura Wilson’s acclaimed and award-winning crime novels have won her many fans. The first novel in her D.I. Stratton series, Stratton’s War, won the CWA Ellis Peters Award for Best Historical Mystery. Her fifth novel, The Lover, won the Prix du Polar European, and two of her books have been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. Her most recent novel, A Willing Victim, is published by Quercus, and she is the Guardian’s crime fiction reviewer.
F. Paul Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author who has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie, and Prometheus Awards. His 45 books span science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, and virtually everything between. He has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media as well, and his work has been translated into 24 languages. His latest thrillers, Nightworld and Cold City, star his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. Jack: Secret Vengeance is the last of a young-adult trilogy starring a fourteen-year-old Jack. Paul resides at the Jersey Shore.
Chinese author Qiu Xiaolong first visited the United States in 1988 to research a book on T. S. Eliot. Accused of previously fund-raising for subversive students in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests, he found himself unable to return home for fear of persecution by the Chinese Communist Party. Now domiciled in St. Louis, Missouri, Qiu Xiaolong has written six crime/mystery novels, all of them featuring the poetry-quoting Chief Inspector Chen Cao. His first novel, Death of a Red Heroine, was published in 2000, and won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. The most recent novel is Don’t Cry, Tai Lake (2012). He has also published a collection of poetry, Lines Around China (2003).
