Clea Simon grew up in New York before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Harvard. She fell in love with the area and lives in nearby Somerville with her husband and their cat, Thisbe. She is the author most recently of the "newspaper noir" amateur sleuth Bad Boy Beat and the Dulcie Schwartz, Theda Krakow, Pru Marlowe, Blackie and Care, and Witch Cats of Cambridge mystery series as well as a number of grittier standalone novels of psychological suspense.