Barbara Cleverly was born in the north of England and is a graduate of Durham University. She lives in Cambridge and is the author of twenty books. Thirteen of these are the Joe Sandilands investigations; the first, The Last Kashmiri Rose, was named a New York Times Book of the Year, and the third, The Damascened Blade, won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger. She has written one other novel in the John Redfyre series, Fall of Angels.