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Belinda Bauer

Belinda Bauer

British ·

Quirky protagonist Character driven Psychological suspense

Born in 1962 in Bromley, on the border of London and Kent, Belinda Bauer spent ten years of her childhood in South Africa before returning to England and settling in Devon – a county whose wild moorlands and tight-knit rural communities would provide the atmospheric backdrop for much of her fiction.

She studied journalism at Cardiff University and worked as a court reporter before turning to screenwriting, spending seven years honing her craft for the screen. Her script The Locker Room earned the Carl Foreman/BAFTA Award for Young British Screenwriters, presented to her by Sidney Poitier himself.

“I like to write from a child’s point of view because children lead secret lives below the radar of the adults around them.”

It was not until the age of forty-five that Bauer wrote her first novel. Blacklands – the story of a twelve-year-old boy who writes letters to a convicted serial killer – won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of 2010, an extraordinary achievement for a debut. What followed was a string of standalones that defied easy categorisation: Rubbernecker won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2014, and Snap was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2018 – a rare distinction for a crime novel.

Each book approaches crime from an unexpected angle – through the eyes of a child, a young anatomy student with Asperger’s, a desperate mother, a retired mercy-killer who discovers his last patient may not have been dying at all.

Quick Facts

  • Debut age: 45
  • Awards: CWA Gold Dagger, Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, CWA Dagger in the Library
  • Booker recognition: Snap longlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2018)
  • Previous career: Court reporter and BAFTA-winning screenwriter
  • Style: Every novel a standalone – never writes sequels

What makes Bauer singular among crime writers is her refusal to settle into formula. She never repeats a trick, and consistently chooses the most vulnerable or overlooked members of society as her protagonists – writing with spare precision and unmistakable compassion.

Standalone Books

  1. 1
    Blacklands
    Blacklands (2009)

    A twelve-year-old boy writes letters to a serial killer to find his uncle's body and bring peace to his grandmother.

  2. 2
    Darkside
    Darkside (2011)

    A small-town policeman investigates mysterious notes left on the pillows of sleeping residents.

  3. 3
    Finders Keepers
    Finders Keepers (2012)

    Children begin to disappear from cars left running outside a village shop in rural Exmoor.

  4. 4
    Rubbernecker
    Rubbernecker (2013)

    An anatomy student with Asperger's becomes obsessed with finding out how his cadaver really died.

  5. 5
    The Facts of Life and Death
    The Facts of Life and Death (2014)

    A ten-year-old girl and her father go on increasingly disturbing night drives along the Devon coast.

  6. 6
    The Shut Eye
    The Shut Eye (2015)

    A desperate mother turns to a psychic to find her missing child, with devastating consequences.

  7. 7
    The Beautiful Dead
    The Beautiful Dead (2016)

    A TV crime reporter receives letters from a killer who wants to be famous for his art of death.

  8. 8
    Snap
    Snap (2018)

    A teenage boy turns to burglary to support his siblings after their mother is murdered and their father falls apart.

  9. 9
    Exit
    Exit (2020)

    A retired volunteer who helps terminally ill patients die discovers that the last person he helped may not have been dying at all.

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