Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and has worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. The first novel in his John Madden series, River of Darkness, was published in 1999 to huge critical acclaim, was shortlisted for four crime fiction awards and won the Grand Prix de Litt�rature Polici�re in France. River of Darkness was followed by The Blood-Dimmed Tide, the CWA Ellis Peters Award shortlisted The Dead of Winter and now The Reckoning.