Ashley Dyer is the pen-name of novelist, Margaret Murphy, working in consultation with forensics expert and Vera and Shetland adviser, Helen Pepper. Splinter in the Blood is their debut novel as a writing duo. The sequel, The Cutting Room, will be published by William Morrow in June 2019.

Margaret Murphy is a former Writing Fellow and reading Round Lector for the Royal Literary Fund, a past Chair of the UK Crime Writers Association, and the founder of Murder Squad. Under her own name she has published nine psychological suspense and police procedural novels. A Short Story Dagger winner, she has also been shortlisted for the First Blood critics’ award for crime fiction and the CWA Dagger in the Library. Helen Pepper is a Senior University Lecturer in Policing. She has been an analyst, Forensic Scientist, CSI, Crime Scene Manager and police trainer, and has co-authored, as well as contributed to, professional policing texts. She was a long-serving CWA Non-Fiction Dagger judge and has worked as forensic consultant on several hit television series, including Vera, Shetland, and Bancroft.