I was born in Italy and came to London after my Italian A-levels to do a degree in English & Drama at Goldsmiths – it was an amazing time in an amazing place.
My first love has always been movies and as soon as I walked into a cutting room – actually a cramped college edit suite with an old two-machine system – I knew I was home.
I started in films as an editor’s apprentice in a 35mm cutting room making tea and sharpening pencils. Since then, over almost twenty years, I have been involved in many UK and US pictures, from small independent projects to large studio productions.
I was an early reader and have always kept notebooks of ideas for stories I wanted to write: when I started my first novel, THE GIFT OF DARKNESS, I only knew that it would be about a young homicide detective who is forced by circumstances to investigate a case with a criminal. And the story would be part procedural, part thriller and full of the twists and turns I loved in my favourite books and movies.
I set the Alice Madison series in Seattle because I had fallen in love with the city many years earlier and it was a way of being there. Seattle and the ruthlessly beautiful wilderness of Washington State have shaped and inspired the stories in every way and continue to do so.
I live in South West London but I spend most of my day in the Pacific Northwest.
