Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, studied at University College Dublin and Cambridge University, and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer, she has written seriously and/or frivolously for almost every national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom since 1993, and appears frequently on radio and television in Ireland, the UK, and on the BBC World Service. Shortlisted for the John Creasey Award for the best first novel, she won the Last Laugh award for the funniest crime novel of the year in 2008 for Murdering Americans. www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk