Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news service for many years. The first novel in his John Madden mystery series, River of Darkness, won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for best international crime novel of 2000 and was nominated for Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards. His other John Madden mysteries include The Blood-Dimmed Tide, The Dead of Winter, The Reckoning, and The Death of Kings