Michael Robotham
About
Gold Dagger winning and Edgar shortlisted author Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960, and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.
For the next 14 years he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain and America. As a senior feature writer for the UK’s Mail on Sunday he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin’s Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled.
In 1993, he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write their autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were bestsellers, with combined sales of more than 2 million copies.
His partially completed first novel, a psychological thriller called The Suspect, caused a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002. Soon afterwards it was chosen by the world’s largest consortium of book clubs as only the fifth International Book of the Month, making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in 15 countries. He has since written 12 further novels.
Michael lives on Sydney’s northern beaches, where he thinks dark thoughts in his ‘cabana of cruelty’ – a name bestowed by his three daughters, who happily poke fun at the man who has fed, clothed and catered to their every expensive whim. Where is the justice?
Michael’s novels have since been translated into 23 languages and have won or been shortlisted for numerous awards, including:
- The Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger (winner, 2015) Life or Death; (shortlisted, 2013) Say You’re Sorry.
- The Crime Writer’s Association Steel Dagger (shortlisted) The Night Ferry and Shatter.
- The Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel (winner, 2005 and 2008) Lost and Shatter.
- The Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel (shortlisted, 2016) Life or Death.
