Richard North Patterson was born in Berkeley, California on February 22, 1947. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1968 and Case Western Reserve University's School of Law in 1971. He has served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Ohio; a trial attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco; and was the SEC's liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor. He retired from the practice of law in 1993 to become a full-time writer. He studied creative writing with Jesse Hill Ford at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1979. His other works include Private… Screening, Eyes of a Child, Silent Witness, No Safe Place, Exile, Eclipse, The Devil's Light, and Fall from Grace. He has received several awards of his work including the French Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in 1995 for Degree of Guilt and a Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for Protect and Defend.