I was born in the UK and grew up on a council estate in central London. I went to a good Jewish school, but played truant a lot and failed to make the most of it. Although academically gifted, I was a school-phobic and did not enjoy it. The only thing I really enjoyed was playing for the school chess team.

After dropping out when I was 15, I drifted aimlessly, but stumbled into creative writing. (I had in fact had two very good English teachers at school, who encouraged and inspired me in this area.)

When my mother died shortly after I dropped out (no causal connection) my father decided that it was time for the family (I had two sisters at the time) to start a new life in Israel.My father remarried and I have another sister. However, unlike the rest of my family, I did not fit in with Israeli society.

So I returned to the UK and kept writing until eventually I broke through and found an agent. It took her another two years to get me published, by Hodder. My first published book was a legal thriller called A Fool for a Client. This was followed three more, but then Hodder dropped me, as did my agent shortly thereafter.

I spent the next ten years in the doldrums working at office jobs and teaching a creative writing course. Then I changed my style a bit, wrote a race-against-time thriller set in the USA, about a man on Death Row and got a new agent, to be followed shortly after that by a three book deal with HarperCollins.

The thriller, MERCY, was followed by NO WAY OUT, another legal thriller with the same lawyer (Alex Sedaka). The latest book is about an expert on Semitic languages, who is called in to help translate the ancient writings on some stone fragments found in an archaeological dig in Sinai.