Daniel Silva was born in Michigan in 1960. While pursuing a master's degree in international relations, he received a temporary job with United Press International to help cover the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Soon after, he left his graduate program to work full-time for United Press International. He worked in San Francisco and Washington, D. C. and as a Middle East correspondent in Cairo and the Persian Gulf. He was working at CNN when his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, was published. In 1997. He then left CNN to become a full-time author. His novels include The Fallen Angel, The English Girl, and other titles in the Gabriel Allon series. He won the Barry Award for Best Thriller… for The Messenger in 2006. In 2014 he made The New York Times Best Seller List with The Heist.