I See You (Mackintosh) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976-77
• Raised— Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Royal Holloway University, Surrey
• Awards—Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year; Cognac Prix du Polar Best
   International Novel
• Currently—lives in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, England


Clare Mackintosh, a former British policewoman, is the author of the thriller novels, I Let You Go (2014) and I See You (2017). The first book was a Richard & Judy book club pick, winner of Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award (beating J.K.Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith), and the Best International Novel at France's Cognac Festival Prix du Polar awards.

Education and career
After attending Aylesbury High School in Buckinghamshire, Mackintosh went to Royal Holloway University in Surrey, taking a degree in French and management. As part of her course work, she spent a year in Paris as a bilingual secretary. Upon graduation, however, she decided she wanted to enter police work. After training, she was transfered to Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds where she was promoted to town sergeant. Later, she became Thames Valley Police operations inspector for Oxfordshire. All told, Mackintosh spent 12 years in the police force

For a number of years, Mackintosh had been writing her own blog, and in 2011 she left police work to try her hand at writing full-time. She took on feature articles as a free-lancer, became a columnist for Cotswold Life, and eventually turned to fiction. After writing what she calls "a fairly mediocre chick-lit novel"—clever enough to gain her an agent but not a publisher—she realized she needed to write on a subject she knew something about: a hit-and-run accident in Oxfordshire that took the life of a young child. Some years later, Mackintosh went through her own devastating loss as a mother. Those two tragedies led her to write I Let You Go.

Personal
In 2006, Clare and her husband Rob Mackintosh became the parents of twin boys, delivered prematurely. Their son Alex contracted meningitis and died when he was a few weeks old. When her surviving son was 15 months old, Mackintosh gave birth to a second set of twins.

Mackintosh is founder and director of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and has become patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity supporting the John Radcliffe Hospital's work with families facing difficult pregnancies. (Adapted from Wikipedia and other online sources, including Writing Magazine. Retrieved 1/17/2017.)