Clare Francis' first novel; Night Sky was published in 1983 to international success. It went to number one in the Sunday Times bestseller list, and spent six weeks in the New York Times top 10. Three more thrillers followed, Red Crystal (1985), Wolf Winter (1987) and Requiem (1991), which was published in the U.S. as The Killing Winds. Her first crime novel, Deceit was published in 1993, and dramatised for television in 2000. Four other highly successful crime novels have followed, and a highly acclaimed literary novel, Homeland. Her latest crime novel Unforgotten has just been published. Her books have been translated into 20 languages and published in over 30 countries. Clare was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, the younger of two sisters. Christmas holidays were spent with her grandparents in a remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales where she developed the love of landscape that is a feature of so much of her fiction. Summer holidays were spent on the Isle of Wight, where she learnt to sail at the age of nine. After five years at the Royal Ballet School she went to an A-level crammer in Oxford (where she appeared in the university revue Keep This to Yourself), then to University College London, where she obtained a degree in Economics. She worked in marketing for three years before taking a year out to travel and discover what she really wanted to do. What began as a personal odyssey turned into what she terms her 'unplanned' five-year career in sailing. The odyssey was an unsponsored and unsung solo voyage across the Atlantic, during which she read, listened to music and tried her hand at writing. Soon after, Clare was offered sponsorship to take part in the Round Britain Race with Eve Bonham. This was followed by the Azores and Back Singlehanded Race, the Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race, and, with a crew of eleven, the Whitbread Round the World Race. It was after writing three works of non-fiction about her adventures, Come Hell or High Water (1977), Come Wind or Weather (1978), and The Commanding Sea (1981) that Clare took the leap into fiction. In 1977 she married Jaques Redon with whom she had a son, Tom, in 1978. She is an MBE, a Fellow of University College London, and an Honorary Fellow of UMIST. She has served as Chairman of the Society of Authors (1997-99) and Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Public Lending Right (2000-03). For the past twenty years she has been commited to the charity Action for ME, of which she is President, a trustee and member of the Council of Management. She herself has had ME (also known as Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) for many years. Clare Francis lives in London and the Isle of Wight, and loves opera and walking.

Minette Walters (born 26 September 1949) is a British mystery writer. After studying at Trevelyan College, University of Durham, she began writing in 1987 with The Ice House, which was published in 1992. She followed this with The Sculptress (1993), which received the 1994 Edgar Award for Best Novel. She has been published in 35 countries and won many awards. The Sculptress has been adapted for television in a BBC series starring Pauline Quirke. Her novels The Ice House, The Echo, The Dark Room, and The Scold's Bridle have also been adapted by the BBC.

Donna Leon (born September 29, 1942, in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice and featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti. Donna Leon has lived in Venice for over twenty-five years. She has worked as a lecturer in English Literature for the University of Maryland University College - Europe (UMUC-Europe) in Italy, then as a Professor from 1981 to 1999 at the american military base of Vicenza (Italy) and a writer. Her crime novels are all situated in or near Venice. They are written in English and translated into many foreign languages, although not, by her request, into Italian. Her ninth Brunetti novel, Friends in High Places, won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2000. Series: * Commissario Brunetti

Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series. Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands. In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson. She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She's Out (ITV, 1995). The name "La Plante" comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s. Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows' revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001). Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.