Claire Askew is the author of the DI Helen Birch crime fiction series, published by Hodder & Stoughton. The first book in the series, All The Hidden Truths, won the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a work in progress, and the 2019 Bloody Scotland Crime Debut Award. Claire was also shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger in 2019 and 2020 for All The Hidden Truths and its follow up, What You Pay For. The fourth in the series, A Matter of Time, was published in 2022, and the fifth, The Dead Don’t Speak, in 2023. She is also a poet, and the author of two full length collections: This changes things (2016) and How To Burn A Woman (2021), both from Bloodaxe Books. In 2020, she published a non fiction book, Novelista: Anyone can write a novel - yes, even you, with John Murray. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh, and is a former Scottish Book Trust Reading Champion, a Jessie Kesson Fellow, and was Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh from 2017 to 2019. She lives in Cumbria.

Website: claireaskew.com

Twitter: @OneNightStanzas

Photo credit (c) Dominic Stevenson

‘Meticulous and compelling […] Set in Edinburgh, too.’ – Ian Rankin

‘Askew is proving to be a master of the suspenseful police procedural.’ – Sunday Times Crime Club