Mike Ripley is the author of 16 novels, including the Angel series which have twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Last Laugh Award for comedy. He was the co-editor of the legendary Fresh Blood anthologies, a scriptwriter for BBC TVs Lovejoy and served as the Daily Telegraph’s crime fiction critic for ten years. He currently writes a regular column for the popular Shots crime and thriller e-zine (www.shotsmag.co.uk) and regularly talks on crime fiction at libraries and festivals.
After 20 years of working in London, he decamped to East Anglia and became an archaeologist. He was thus one of the few crime writers who regularly turned up real bodies.
In 2003, at the age of 50, he suffered a stroke and regained the use of his left hand and arm by bashing out a book on an old portable typewriter on the kitchen table. He now works part-time for the charity Different Strokes and is the author of Surviving A Stroke (White Ladder Press, 2006).