Born outside Chicago in 1950, Jeffrey Deaver received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and became a journalist. He then received his law degree from Fordham University and practiced for several years. A poet, he also wrote his own songs and performed them around the country.
The author of twenty-two novels and two short story collections, Deaver’s works have been translated into twenty-five languages and is a perennial bestseller internationally. Among his many honors and nominations are six Edgar Award nominations, three Ellery Queen Reader’s Awards for Best Short Story of the Year, the 2001 W H Smith Thumping Good Read Award for The Empty Chair and the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award from the Crime Writers Association for Garden of Beasts.
In addition to his popular and critically acclaimed series about the brilliant quadriplegic detective, Lincoln Rhyme, he has written more than a dozen standalone suspense novels.
His first Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Bone Collector, was made into a film in 1999 starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. A Maiden’s Grave was turned into an HBO movie retitled Dead Silence, starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin.
He lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.