Quentin Bates made his escape from suburbia at the end of the seventies as a gap year turned into a gap decade spent in the north of Iceland. He worked ashore and at sea before returning to England and, once finally ashore for good, drifted by accident into journalism. Finally the lure of fiction became too strong to resist. Sergeant Gunnhildur and the series of novels she features in have their origins in a deep affection for Iceland and its people, and an intimate knowledge of Icelandic society and its language, customs and quirks. Today he divides his time between the north of Iceland and the south of England, translating books from Icelandic in addition to working on his own fiction. Icelandic crime-writer Lilja SigurdardÓttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain, and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written four crime novels, with Snare, the first in a new series and Lilja's English debut, shortlisting for the CWA International Dagger and hitting bestseller lists worldwide. Trap soon followed suit. The film rights have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. Lilja has a background in education and has worked in evaluation and quality control for preschools in recent years. She lives in ReykjavÍk with her partner.