Author 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 afterwards, 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 is first novel, The Unlikely Spy, was published. In 1997, he left CNN to become a full-time author. He currently lives in Washington, D. C. with his family.