I write thrillers. Heat 2, my latest novel, is a prequel/sequel to the film Heat, co-authored with the film’s writer/director, Michael Mann. Rolling Stone calls it “A genuinely exhilarating expansion of the movie’s world, complete with . . . some truly jaw-dropping, bullet-filled set pieces.” The Associated Press says, “Slick as a Neil McCauley heist and as intense as a Vincent Hanna chase, ‘Heat 2’ is just dynamite.”
Heat 2 debuted at #1 on the New York Times best seller list.
UNSUB, the first novel in my series featuring FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix, won the 2018 Barry Award for Best Thriller. The Dark Corners of the Night, the most recent UNSUB thriller, was bought by Amazon Studios for development as an hour-long television drama.
My books include The Evan Delaney novels, featuring a smart-aleck journalist from Santa Barbara, California. Stephen King calls them “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.”
China Lake won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.
The Jo Beckett series features a San Francisco forensic psychiatrist. It includes The Liar’s Lullaby, The Memory Collector, and The Dirty Secrets Club, which was chosen one of the Top Ten thrillers of 2008 by Amazon, and won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Procedural Novel of the year.
The Nightmare Thief, featuring both Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney, won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense audiobook of the year. My stand alone novel The Shadow Tracer was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013. Phantom Instinct was named one of “The Best Books of Summer” by O, the Oprah magazine.
I served as the 2019 and 2020 President of Mystery Writers of America.
Writing is my third career. Earlier, I practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. Now I live in Austin, Texas, and write suspense novels—a job I’m immensely lucky to have.
MegGardiner.com
e-mail: meg@meggardiner.com
Facebook.com/MegGardinerBooks
Twitter: @MegGardiner1
Instagram: @MegGardiner1
(Nick Berard photo)
lying for a living 