Brian McGilloway was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1974, and teaches English at St Columb's College, Derry. He lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their four children. He is the author of six previous crime novels: Little Girl Lost, The Rising, Bleed A River Deep, Gallows Lane, Borderlands and The Nameless Dead. Little Girl Lost was the first novel to feature DS Lucy Black, who returns in Hurt.