Lindsay Ashford

Lindsay Ashford studied criminology at Cambridge University and went on to work as a journalist for the BBC. Her first novel, Frozen, was inspired by the prostitutes and vice squad officers she met while carrying out research into the sex trade in Wolverhampton. Her second book, Strange Blood, was shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, 2006 and last year also saw the publication of Death Studies - her third novel about forensic psychologist Megan Rhys. Lindsay also writes for the Quick Read series: The Rubber Woman was published in March 2007.

www.lindsayashford.co.uk

Marcel Berlins

Marcel Berlins is a lawyer turned journalist. In addition to being The Times’s crime fiction reviewer, he writes two weekly Guardian columns and is visiting professor of law at two universities. He’s a frequent broadcaster and his writings have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines.

Mark Billingham

Mark Billingham is one of the UK’s most acclaimed and popular crime writers. His series of London-based novels featuring D.I. Tom Thorne has won him the Sherlock Award, the Theakston’s Crime Novel Of The Year, 2006 and been nominated for five CWA Daggers. Each book, from his debut Sleepyhead, to the most recent, Buried, has been a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. Mark Billingham’s new Tom Thorne novel, Death Message, is published by Little, Brown in September 2007, but will be exclusively available, two months ahead of publication, to those attending the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.

www.markbillingham.com

Paul Blezard

A writer of fiction and non-fiction, Paul is the key presenter at Oneword Radio – the digital station dedicated to spoken word, books and drama. He has interviewed over 1200 authors for his daily “Between the Lines” show, chaired events at literary festivals from Hay to Deia, Cheltenham to Edinburgh.

www.oneword.co.uk

Stephen Booth

Stephen Booth was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire and his interests include folklore, the Internet and walking in the hills of the Peak District. Scared to Live is the seventh in the series featuring Derbyshire detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry.

www.stephen-booth.com

Simon Brett

Simon Brett worked as a light entertainment producer in radio and TV before taking up writing full time in 1979. As well as the Charles Paris and Mrs Pargeter detective series, Simon is also the author of the radio and television series 'After Henry', the radio series 'No Commitments' and the best-selling 'How to be a Little Sod'. His novel A Shock to the System was made into a film, starring Michael Caine. His recent TV credits include the 'Rosemary and Thyme' series for ITV1 starring Felicity Kendall and Pam Ferris. Married with three children, he lives in an Agatha Christie-style village on the South Downs.

Christopher Brookmyre

Christopher Brookmyre was born in Glasgow in 1968 and has recently returned to the city with his wife and son.  Since 1996 he has published a novel a year to great critical and commercial success. These days he has a burgeoning sideline as a football pundit, appearing regularly on BBC Scotland’s Sportscene on Saturday afternoons, as well as Radio Scotland’s Ninety Minutes and Off The Ball. In December 2005, he made his stand-up comedy debut at the Comedy Store in London, successfully opening for a sell-out bill that also included Rich Hall, Jeff Green and Jenny Eclair. His latest novel Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks is published in August 2007.

Richard Burke

Richard Burke was born in London and read English at Oxford University. He is an award-winning producer and director of TV science programmes who began his career as an assistant producer on BBC's Tomorrow's World. His credits include the series 'Space' for the BBC, Discovery America's hit series 'Raging Planet' and Channel 4's 'Electric Skies'. He lives in Somerset with his wife and son. His first novel, Frozen, was published in January 2004.

www.richardburke.co.uk

Tom Cain

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, Cuba. Although he has edited four magazines, published over a dozen books, written film-scripts and been translated into some 20 languages, The Accident Man is his first thriller.

C.J. Carver

C.J. Carver was born in the UK. She has taken part in the London to Saigon Motoring Challenge and the London to Cape Town 4x4 Adventure Drive. She blames her love of adventure on her parents: her mother set the land speed record in Australia and her father was a jet fighter pilot. First Strike Dead will be published in July.

www.cjcarver.com

Lee Child

Lee Child is British but moved with his family from Cumbria to the United States shortly after he started a new career as a thriller writer.  He now divides his time between New York and France.  His first novel, Killing Floor, won the Anthony Award and his second, Die Trying, won WH Smith’s Thumping Good Read Award. All his thrillers feature Jack Reacher, the former military cop and maverick drifter, and all have been bestsellers.

www.leechild.com

Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2006 for Raven Black, which attracted rave reviews in the press.  With this award, which at £20,000 is the biggest in crime-writing, she has been able to realise her dream of becoming a full-time writer.

www.anncleeves.com

Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben was the first ever author to win all three major crime awards in the US. His books are published in thirty-three languages around the globe, with number ones in more that half a dozen countries. Since his critically-acclaimed Myron Bolitar series debuted in 1995, Harlan Coben has won a host of international awards. 'Tell No One' (Ne le dis à personne) was France’s biggest box office hit of 2006, and is released in the UK in June 2007.

www.harlancoben.com

Natasha Cooper

An ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and lifelong Londoner, Natasha Cooper writes for a variety of newspapers and journals, including the Times, the Express, Crime Time and the Times Literary Supplement. She has discussed her work on BBC Breakfast, appeared on University Challenge the Professionals, contributed to many radio programmes such as Saturday Review, Front Row and Woman's Hour. Her Novels include A Place of Safety, Keep Me Alive, and Gagged & Bound. The most recent, A Greater Evil, was published in hardback in.

www.natashacooper.co.uk

Lindsey Davis

Lindsey Davis has written nineteen novels, beginning with The Course of Honour, the love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. Her books are translated into many languages and serialised on BBC Radio 4. Past Chair of the Crimewriters’ Association and a Vice President of the Classical Association, she has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in London.

www.lindseydavis.co.uk

Stella Duffy

Born in London and raised in New Zealand, Stella Duffy is the author of ten novels, over thirty stories, and eight plays. Her novel State of Happiness was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize, and she is currently writing the screenplay adaptation for 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 Improbable. She is an occasional guest with the Comedy Store Players.

www.stelladuffy.com

Dan Fesperman

Dan Fesperman's travels as a writer have taken him to 30 countries and three war zones, beginning with the Persian Gulf War in 1991. As a journalist he has covered the Gulf War from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; run the European bureau in Berlin during the years of the Yugoslav civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia; and in 2001 went to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the wake of 9 -11. The work has come with a fair share of adventures, not the least of which include accepting the surrender, along with a colleague, of 10 forlorn and unarmed Iraqi soldiers in the Kuwaiti desert in 1991, and surviving a fatal ambush on a convoy of journalists travelling through Afghanistan in November 2001.

www.danfesperman.com

Elena Forbes

Elena Forbes has lived most of her life in London.  After reading Modern Languages at Bristol University she worked as a portfolio manager for various international investment banks.  She now writes full time and lives in Notting Hill.  Her first novel, Die With Me, is published by Quercus on 5th July 2007.

Barry Forshaw

Barry Forshaw is the author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction. He is currently editing an encyclopedia of British Crime Writing, and reviews crime for the Independent and the Express.  He also edits Crime Time.

www.crimetime.co.uk

Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth is the author of ten bestselling novels: The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, The Fist of God, Icon and Avenger. His other works include The Biafra Story, The Shepherd, two short story collection, No Comebacks and The Veteran, and a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, The Phantom of Manhattan. He has also collected together an anthology of flying tales, Great Flying Stories, which includes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton and H.G. Wells. He lives in Hertfordshire, England.

www.frederickforsyth.co.uk

John Fullerton

John Fullerton was born in Dorset. His mother was South African, his father a Royal Navy submariner. He grew up in Cape Town, attended boarding school, underwent compulsory military service in the undistinguished role of “die snaakse Engelse korporaal” and unsuccessfully tried several jobs, including farming and finance, before a series of journalistic adventures and misadventures over more than thirty years, 19 of them with Reuters.

In all, he reported from 38 countries and covered a dozen wars, more or less by accident. Bored at one point with both his job and a disagreeable relationship, he drew himself to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6, and at the height of the Cold War volunteered to work undercover for two years against the Soviets.

www.johnfullerton.com

Michele Giuttari

Michele Giuttariu is former head of the Florence Police Force (1995-2003), where he was responsible for catching The Beast of Florence and jailing several key Mafia figures. He wrote A Florentine Death and Similar Blood in collaboration with Carl Lucarelli.

Philip Gooden

Philip Gooden is the author of the Elizabethan-set Nick Revill murder mystery series.  A contributor to various short story anthologies, he also works as an editor, most recently on The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes.  He is also involved in various committees for the Crime Writers' Association and regularly contributes to its Red Herrings magazine.

Jason Goodwin

Jason Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other books of cultural history and travel. He lives in Sussex, England, is married with four children, speaks French and German and once walked to Istanbul from Poland. The Janissary Tree is the first of a series of novels featuring Yashim.

www.jasongoodwin.net

Alex Gray

Alex Gray was born and educated in Glasgow. She has worked as a folk singer, a visiting officer for the Department of Social Security and an English teacher. She has been awarded the Scottish Association of Writers' Constable and Pitlochry trophies for her crime writing. Married with a son and daughter, she now writes full time.

www.alex-gray.com

Jane Gregory

Jane Gregory is an authors’ agent and co-founder of the Orange Prize for Fiction. After years negotiating contracts and selling rights for publishers, she set up as an agent in 1987.  With her then business partner, they specialised in representing authors of crime and thrillers.  Authors represented and appearing at the festival this year include:- Natasha Cooper, Val McDermid, Caro Ramsay, Zoe Sharp, Martyn Waites and Laura Wilson.

www.gregoryandcompany.co.uk

Peter Guttridge

Peter Guttridge was born in Burnley, Lancashire and educated at Oxford and Nottingham Universities. A freelance journalist specialising in literature, film and comedy, he has written for top national newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Times and The Telegraph and is the crime reviewer for The Observer. He also writes about – and doggedly practices – astanga vinyasa yoga. 

www.peterguttridge.com

Hilary Hale

Hilary Hale is Editorial Director of the Little Brown Book Group (UK) and has spent most of her professional life as a publisher of crime fiction.  She has had the honour of working with such authors as Mark Billingham, Christopher Brookmyre, Patricia Cornwell, Colin Dexter, Linda Fairstein, Frances Fyfield and Peter Lovesey.

www.littlebrown.co.uk

Tom Harper

Tom Harper (real name Edwin Thomas) grew up in West Germany, Belgium and the USA.  He read History at Lincoln College, Oxford.  He also writes award-winning historical naval fiction under his real name. Tom won the CWA debut award in 2001 for The Blighted Cliffs. He also wrote The Mosaic of Shadows and Knights of the Cross.

www.tom-harper.co.uk

David Hewson

David was born in Yorkshire in 1953 and left school at the age of seventeen to work as a cub reporter on one of the smallest evening newspapers in the country in Scarborough. Eight years later he was a staff reporter on The Times in London, covering news, business and latterly working as arts correspondent.

www.davidhewson.com

Joanne Hines

Joanna Hines was one of the first authors chosen for WH Smith's Fresh Talent Award with her first novel, Dora's Room.  She lives in London and is the author of, among many others, Improvising Carla (made into a major TV drama by RDF Productions and broadcast on ITV), Surface Tension and Angels of the Flood.

www.joannahines.co.uk

Graham Hurley

Graham Hurley is renowned for the nerve-jangling realism of his books, it has gained him a reputation not only as one of Britain’s best authors, but as one of the few truly authoritative voices in crime fiction. Hurley spent 20 years as a documentary film maker, this background has had a profound influence on his writing, bringing to his work an authenticity more closely related to his earlier journalistic career than most other crime writers.

www.grahamhurley.co.uk

Peter James

Peter James is a bestselling author and film producer.  Educated at Charterhouse and then at film school, he began his career in North America working as a screen writer and film producer (his projects included the award-winning Dead of the Night) before returning to England. 

All Peter James’s novels reflect his deep interest in crime, medicine, science and the paranormal.  They are also meticulously researched, which for Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead included spending several days at the Brighton and Hove mortuary and many days out on patrol and as a fly on the wall with many divisions of Sussex Police.  Peter has also studied the criminal mind by visiting Broadmoor and works closely with the Brighton police murder squad to get an authentic insight into how investigations are carried out.

www.peterjames.com

Paul Johnston

Paul Johnston was born in 1957 in Edinburgh, where he lived before going to Oxford University.  He made his home on a small Greek island for several years and now divides his time between the UK and Greece.

He is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels: five featuring Quint Dalrymple - Body Politic (winner of the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best crime novel), The Bone Yard, Water of Death, The Blood Tree and The House of Dust; and three featuring Alex Mavros - A Deeper Shade of Blue, The Last Red Death (winner of the Sherlock Award for best detective novel) and The Golden Silence. Paul's latest novel The Death List, a revenge thriller set in London, is published in summer 2007.

www.paul-johnston.co.uk

Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly is a freelance journalist. His previous novels have been shortlisted for a number of key awards, including The Water Clock for the Crime Writers Association John Creasey Award and The Water Clock and The Fire Baby  for The Bodies in the Library Award.  The Fire Baby was long-listed for the Theakton’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year, 2006.

Simon Kernick

Simon Kernick is the critically acclaimed author of five crime novels, which delve into the seedier side of London life. His debut, The Business of Dying which featured a detective who moonlighted as a hitman, was described as 'the crime debut of the year for 2002' by the London Independent while the sequel, A Good Day to Die, was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for the best thriller of 2005. They and his gangland thrillers, The Murder Exchange and The Crime Trade, are available in the US through St Martins Press.

www.simonkernick.com

Margaret Kinsman

Margaret Kinsman is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at London South Bank University.  She has contributed essays on crime and mystery writers to numerous scholarly and reference publications, has given papers and chaired panels at international conferences, and has contributed to many TV and radio programmes on crime fiction. 

She is a member of the British Crime Writers Association, and currently is on the CWA Judges panel for the Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger award.  Since 2004, Ms Kinsman has been Executive Editor of CLUES: A Journal of Detection, published by Heldref Publications in Washington, D.C.

Mark Lawson

Mark Lawson was born in London in 1962. He has worked for the Universe, the Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday and, currently, the Guardian, where he is a cultural columnist and television critic; he has won many awards for his journalism. He is also an award-winning broadcaster, best known as host of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. He has written one non-fiction book and four works of fiction – most recently Enough Is Enough: Or The Emergency Government, to be published in paperback in June 2006.

John Lawton

John Lawton is a degenerating misanthrope who lives in a remote hilltop village in Derbyshire. He is not entirely sure why. He likes T.C. Boyle, Chuck Palahniuk and Cormac McCarthy - and considers the seminal text of our time to be Myron by Gore Vidal. He is keen on the cultivation of the onion and obscure varieties of potato.

Laura Lippman

Before becoming a full time novelist, Laura Lippman was a newspaper reporter for 20 years, including twelve at the Baltimore Sun. She lives in Baltimore with her partner, the writer David Simon.

www.lauralippman.com

Michael Marshall

Michael Marshall is a novelist and screenwriter.  Before writing  the internationally bestselling novels The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels, he had already established a successful career under the name Michael Marshall Smith: his groundbreaking first novel, Only Forward won the Philip K. Dick and August  Derleth Awards, and its critically acclaimed successors Spares and One of Us have been optioned by major Hollywood studios.  He lives in North London with his wife, son and two cats.

www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

Stuart MacBride

Stuart MacBride has scrubbed toilets offshore, flunked out of university, set up his own graphic design company, worked for some really nasty marketing people, got dragged into the heady world of the internet, developed massive applications for the oil industry, drunk heaps of wine and created the perfect recipe for mushroom soup. He lives, just left of the back of beyond, in North-east Scotland with his wife Fiona and enough potatoes to feed an army.

www.stuartmacbride.com

Val McDermid

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community, then read English at Oxford.  She was a journalist for 16 years starting out in the south-west on the Plymouth and South Devon Times and Sunday Independent, where she was a prize-winning Trainee Journalist. From 1977 to 1979 she was a news reporter on the Scottish Daily Record and worked for Gay News on a freelance basis as feature writer and theatre critic.  Journalism then took her to Manchester, to The People.  From 1988 until 1991 she was Northern Bureau Chief. In 2006 Val McDermid won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year with The Torment of Others. Her new novel Beneath the Bleeding is out in August.

www.valmcdermid.com

Nicola Monaghan

Nicola Monaghan graduated from the University of York in 1992, and went on to teach for several years before taking a job in the City of London. A career in finance took her to New York, Paris and Chicago, before she gave it all up in 2001 to return to her home town, Nottingham, and pursue an MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University. She now lives in Nottingham, with partner Chad, and works in marketing at the local arts house cinema and media centre.

The Killing Jar is Nicola’s first novel, and is inspired by the lives she witnessed on the council estates where she grew up.

www.cutting-edge-cards.com/niki/thekillingjar.html

Greg Mosse

Greg Mosse graduated in Drama and English from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published works of science fiction, children’s stories and commercial and literary translation and is an experienced editor and creative writing teacher. Greg and Kate Mosse work together via an online creative resource based around the research for Kate's latest novel Labyrinth, published in 2005.

www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk

Jenni Murray

Jenni Murray was educated at Barnsley Girls High School and Hull University. She began her broadcasting career in local radio in Bristol and has subsequently presented South Today from Southampton, Newsnight, Today and, since 1987, Woman’s Hour. The programme under her direction has won a number of Sony Awards and she was UK Broadcaster of the year in 1998. In 1999 she was awarded the OBE for her services to broadcasting. She writes for a number of newspapers and magazines and her publications include The Woman’s Hour - a history of women since WW2, Is it me or Is It Hot in Here? and That’s My Boy!

Helen Pepper

Helen started her career with the Forensic Science Service as an assistant scientific officer, dealing mainly with offences against property. She later moved on to become a crime scene investigator with West Yorkshire Police. On moving to County Durham with her husband, she was appointed a senior scientific support officer with Durham Constabulary. Helen has worked as a registered forensic practitioner and is a member of the Forensic Science Society. She has a wealth of experience in the investigation of all crime types, from simple thefts to murders and terrorism. Helen currently works as a lecturer in Police Studies.

Ian Pepper

Ian Pepper is a Principal Lecturer in Policing.  He is a former police crime scene investigator and fingerprint officer.  Ian has been an instructor and team leader at the National Training Centre for Scientific Support to Crime Investigation and has designed and delivered training in the Far East, Middle East, Africa and across the UK. Ian Pepper is the author of the acclaimed Crime Scene Investigation: Methods and Procedures.

Sheila Quigley

Sheila Quigley started work at fifteen as a presser in Hepworth’s, a tailoring factory. She married at eighteen and had three daughters: Dawn, Janine and Diane, and a younger son, Michael. Recently divorced, she now has eight grandchildren, and every Saturday and Sunday can be found at a football match for the Darlington Academy under thirteen’s and the Northern league. Sheila has lived in Houghton le Spring near Sunderland for thirty years.

www.theseahills.co.uk

Caro Ramsay

Caro Ramsay was born in Glasgow and now lives in a village on the West Coast of Scotland. A trained osteopath and acupuncturist, she devotes much of her time to the complimentary treatment of injured wildlife at a local rescue centre. Absolution is her first novel.

David Roberts

David Roberts worked in publishing for over thirty years, most recently as a publishing director, before devoting his energies to writing full time.  He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire.

www.lordedwardcorinth.co.uk

C.J Sansom

C.J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a Ph.D. in History.  After working in a variety of jobs he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer.

Following on from his remarkable debut, Dissolution, Dark Fire is the second novel in his Shardlake series.

Kate Saunders

Kate Saunders began her career as a professional actor but moved into journalism following the publication of her first novel in 1986. She has written two literary novels, The Prodigal Father and Storm in the Citadel, and has edited an anthology Revenge for Virago. She is also co-author, with Peter Stanford, of the controversial Catholics and Sex. Her other novels include Night Shall Overtake Us, Wild Young Bohemians, Lily Josephine, The Marrying Game and Bachelor Boys.

Manda Scott

Born and brought up in Scotland, Manda Scott qualified at the Glasgow Vet School in 1984 and came south to be first, a surgeon, then an equine neonatologist and finally anaesthetist. Before turning to historical fiction, she had established herself as a successful crime writer. Her first novel Hen’s Teeth, was shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize and The Times hailed her as ‘one of Britain’s most important crime writers’ for No Good Dead.

www.mandascott.co.uk

Zoë Sharp

Zoë Sharp spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. In 1988 she gave up her regular job to become a freelance photo-journalist, and has been making a living writing and photographing ever since. Her Charlie Fox series of novels include − Killer Instinct, Riot Act, Hard Knocks and First Drop which achieved bestseller status with the Independent Mystery Booksellers' Association. Road Kill the fifth in the series, was published in 2005. Zoë lives in Cumbria, her hobbies are sailing, fast cars, faster motorbikes, target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on.

www.zoesharp.com

Michelle Spring

Michelle Spring abandoned her career as a social scientist and adopted crime writing after becoming the target of a stalker.  Her first novel, Every Breath You Take was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Arthur Ellis Award.  Spring’s subsequent novels include Running for Shelter, Standing in the Shadows, Nights in White Satin, and In the Midnight Hour which won the Arthur Ellis Award as the Best Crime Novel of the Year.  Michelle Spring is currently a Royal Literary Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she holds writing tutorials with undergraduate and postgraduate students.

www.unusualsuspects.co.uk.

Cath Staincliffe

Raised in Bradford, Cath Staincliffe graduated with a degree in Drama and Theatre Arts from Birmingham University. She moved to Manchester where she lives today, which provides a 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. Her work has been serialised for BBC Radio 4 programmes, including Woman’s Hour and her Blue Murder series has been made into an ITV1 series. She lives with her partner and their three children in East Didsbury, Manchester.

www.murdersquad.co.uk

Nick Stone

Nick Stone was born in Cambridge in 1966. His father is the historian Norman Stone, and his mother descends from one of Haiti’s oldest families, the Aubrys.  Some of his later relatives actually worked for Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, Haiti’s most notorious dictator. It was during a year spent in Haiti in the mid-nineties that the plot for Mr Clarinet first began to take shape.  Nick is married and lives in London.

www.nickstone.co.uk

Frank Tallis

Frank Tallis is a writer and practising Harley Street clinical psychologist. He is the recipient of the 1999 Writers’ Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain, and in 2000 he won the New London Writers’ Award (London Arts Board).  Frank lives in North London.

www.franktallis.com

Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor grew up in the Fen country of East Anglia and was educated at Cambridge University and University College London. He writes mainly crime novels and thrillers. They include the series featuring William Dougal, a detective of low moral fibre who occasionally commits murders as well as solves them; an espionage trilogy whose chronology stretches from the 1930s to the 1980s; psychological thrillers; and books for younger readers. The American Boy was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, 2005.

www.andrew-taylor.net

Aline Templton

Aline Templeton lives in Edinburgh with her husband and their Dalmatian dog, in a house with a balcony built by an astronomer to observe the stars over the beautiful city skyline.  She has worked in education and broadcasting and has written numerous articles and stories for newspapers and magazines.  Her books have been published in translation in several European countries as well as in the United States.

James Twining

James Twining was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Paris. After graduating from Oxford University with a first class degree in French Literature, he worked in Investment Banking for four years before leaving to set up his own company, which he then sold 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 wife and baby daughter.

www.jamestwining.com

Martyn Waites

Martyn Waites is the author of seven novels, all set in his native Newcastle Upon Tyne.  The Mercy Seat, the first novel featuring Joe Donovan, was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller 2006 and the LA Times Crime Book Prize.  In addition to running arts-based workshops for socially excluded teenagers and recovering addicts in both London and Essex, Martyn has held two prison writing residencies, one at Huntercome Young Offenders Institution, and one at HMP Chelmsford.  He is currently the RLF Writing Fellow at the University of Essex.  His most recent Joe Donovan novel, Bone Machine, is available now.

Laura Wilson

Laura Wilson’s was nominated for the CWA Ellis Peters Award and, in the US, for an Anthony Award for her debut thriller A Little Death. Her last novel, The Lover, was nominated for the 2004 CWA Gold Dagger for fiction and the Ellis Peters Award. In France it won the 2004 Prix du Polar European for the best crime novel of the year in translation. Laura was brought up in London and has degrees in English Literature from Somerville College, Oxford and UCL, London. She has worked briefly as a teacher and more successfully as an editor of non-fiction books. She has written history books for children and is interested in history, particularly of the recent past, painting and sculpture, uninhabited buildings, underground structures, cemeteries and time capsules. Laura lives in North London with her basset hound, Freeway.

www.unusualsuspects.co.uk