Birds, Strangers and Psychos

Sophie Hannah is the internationally bestselling author of 9 psychological thrillers, which have been published in more than 20 countries and adapted for television. Her novel The Carrier won the 2013 Specsavers National Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and as a poet has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

Sherlock Holmes fan Guy Adams has written two original Sherlock Holmes novels, The Breath of God and The Army of Doctor Moreau, as well as The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional facsimile scrapbook published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Conan Doyle's birth. He has also written three bestselling Life on Mars tie-in books, including The Rules of Modern Policing, as well as two Torchwood novels, The Men Who Sold the World and The House That Jack Built.

James Grady (b. 1949) is the author of screenplays, articles, and over a dozen critically acclaimed thrillers. Born in Shelby, Montana, Grady worked a variety of odd jobs, from hay bucker to gravedigger, before graduating from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism. In 1973, after years of acquiring rejection slips for short stories and poems, Grady sold his first novel: Six Days of the Condor, a sensational bestseller which was eventually adapted into a film starring Robert Redford.   After moving to Washington, D.C. Grady worked for a syndicated columnist, investigating everything from espionage to drug trafficking. He quit after four years to focus on his own writing, and has spent the last three decades composing thrillers and screenplays. His body of work has won him France’s Grand Prix du Roman Noir, Italy’s Raymond Chandler Award, and Japan’s Baka-Misu literary prize. Grady’s most recent novel is Mad Dogs (2006). He and his wife live in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

David Thomson is the author of more than twenty-five books, including The Biographical Dictionary of Film, biographies of Orson Welles and David O. Selznick, and the pioneering novel Suspects, which featured characters from film. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Anne Billson is a film critic and author. She lives in Brussels, Belgium.