Chris says that he’s always been drawn to books that give insights into unusual minds. The twisted desires of Frederick in John Fowles’ The Collector, the tormented thoughts of Scobie in Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, the murderous urges of Francie in Patrick McCabe’s Butcher Boy: all had an influence in shaping him as a writer.

His own books – tense psychological thrillers set very firmly in Manchester – follow the fortunes of DI Spicer as he pursues mad, bad and deadly individuals through the city’s ever changing landscape. Alongside detailed descriptions of Manchester itself, Chris covers a variety of issues, including the violent theft of high performance cars, the shady end of the cosmetic surgery industry and the consequences of Britain’s ‘war on terror’. He does so with ‘intelligence and subtlety’, according to The Bookseller. In 2007, Chris was selected by Waterstone’s as one of their top ‘25 Authors for the Future’.

“It's a corny cliché, but anything can stimulate an idea. The hard part is recognizing which ideas will work, and developing those ideas into a workable story. An idea is not a plot. An idea is not a novel. Turning it into a story – that's where the real work comes in.”

“Coben plucks...strings like a virtuoso.” Publishing Weekly

“Novel writing is never about the plot. It is about human beings and what lies beneath their surface. Every one of my books has that subtext.

“Thematically, again and again my books are about people who are trying to be better than they have been. Max Holman is the most complete example of that that I have addressed.”

“As with a lot of my writing, the idea for The 50/50 Killer came from an event that actually happened to me. It was ten years ago, and I was on holiday with my girlfriend at the time, backpacking around Italy. Our first night was at a campsite on the West coast, and in the early evening we set off from a deserted beach and swam in the sea – only to be caught in a current and find ourselves in trouble. I got back to shore first, and had to make a choice about whether to go back in and help my girlfriend. Readers of the book will recognise the situation – although in real-life (no thanks to me) it had a far happier outcome.

But the event got me thinking. We often tell people we love them and couldn’t live without them – but they’re easy words to say, and we rarely have to prove it. And it’s often emotional suffering that builds up over time and causes relationships to end. So I imagined a killer who forced people to confront their promises, and who asked the question ‘how much suffering will you endure for this person you claim to love?’ in a very literal and physical way. As well as creating a scary and entertaining thriller, I hoped that readers might ask themselves the same questions.

What would you do?

And when was the last time you looked in your attic.”

“John Connor's day job as a barrister involves heading up a team responsible for the prosecution of serious crime – experience that shows in this novel's meticulous attention to detail and complex characterisation.” Daily Record

All of Lisa Gardner’s books are inspired by true crime. Hide is based upon the case of a man who targeted a young girl by leaving gifts on her front porch. The police then discovered he’d broken into a house across the street and was living in the attic. Lisa is always on the look-out for a case that will give her goose bumps – and the basis of a new book.

The author of 22 books, Lisa calls herself a ‘research geek’ and spends time with the law enforcement agencies featured in her novels. She has close contact with the FBI and local police departments. In fact, the crime scene in Hide, where the bodies of six girls are discovered, was actually chosen by Boston Police department homicide detectives.

“The Night Gardener had its seeds in a series of killings, the Freeway Phantom Murders, which occurred in the 1970’s in the poorer sections of Washington D.C.. Seven girls were slain and the killer was never found. Many of the police who worked on the case were haunted by their inability to solve it. It remained an obsession for the detectives and also for the families of the victims. I set out to write a novel about the long-term effect of an unsolved, horrific crime. How does one find spirituality in a world gone wrong?

Gus Ramone is a homicide detective investigating a murder with similarities to crimes that occurred twenty years in the past. Among the three lead characters, he alone manages to lead a healthy life through his ability to put away his gun and badge at the end of the work day and tend to his wife and mixed-race children. In the novel, I explore the importance of family, the dilemma of kids stuck in a dysfunctional school system and the challenge of raising children of colour in a street tough environment and still-racist society.”

“My philosophy towards my writing has always been the same: work hard, be talented and get lucky. The only thing that we have control over of those three is to work hard and to be true to what we want to accomplish and to say through our writing.”

At the age of twenty-four, Finder published his first book, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America's Most Powerful Businessmen, a controversial expose about multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer's ties to Soviet intelligence. Though Hammer threatened a libel suit, Finder was eventually vindicated when the fall of the Soviet Union opened archives that verified the truth of his account.

In the late 1980's, Finder turned to writing fiction, discovering in the process that his secret sources (Finder is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers) revealed classified information more willingly to a novelist than they did to him as a journalist.

His first novel, The Moscow Club, based on the premise of a KGB coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was published in 1991, six months before the actual coup took place. Considered far-fetched by some at the time of its release, the book received wide critical acclaim

Finder's second novel, Extraordinary Powers, about the discovery of a Soviet mole in the highest ranks of the CIA, was published just days before the unmasking of CIA mole Aldrich Ames. The Zero Hour, which featured a female FBI agent tracking a terrorist in Manhattan was the first novel ever written with the official co-operation of both the CIA and the FBI.

Finder's fourth novel, High Crimes, has been made into a major motion picture starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman and directed by Carl Franklin.

John Connor arrived on the crime fiction scene with his dark police procedural Phoenix which introduced DC Karen Sharpe in a novel set in Yorkshire. Since then, Connor, a former barrister involved in some of the biggest drug and gang related cases with the Crown Prosecution Service has continued writing about the investigations of Karen Sharpe with The Play Room, and now the third novel in the series, A Child's Game is out in paperback.