James Carlos Blake is one of the America's most highly regarded living authors of historical crime fiction. Born in Mexico, his family moved regularly when he was a child, living in various towns along the border and coast before finally settling in Texas when he was six. After a stint in the army, Blake attended the University of South Florida and received a Master's degree from Bowling Green State University, both universities where he would later teach. In 1997 he left teaching to write full-time. Blake's first novel, The Pistoleer, was published in 1995 to overwhelming acclaim. Its unusual format—with each chapter told from a different character's perspective—caused critics to dub it an unusually promising debut. Since then Blake has written eight novels and one collection of stories, most of which dealt with real-life characters from the American west. He lives and works in Arizona.