Ann Cleeves is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez, who can now be found on television in ITV’s Vera and BBC One’s Shetland. The Long Call, the start of her new Two Rivers series featuring Devonian Matthew Venn, has received critical acclaim and the series is also being adapted for television. She has written over thirty novels, which have sold over a million copies worldwide, and in 2017 she was awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger.

Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. She lives in North Tyneside near where the Vera books are set.