Last Child (Hart)

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where—Durham, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Davidson College; MAcc, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill;
   J.D., University of New Hampshire
• Awards—Edgar Awards (2), Best Novel; Barry Award; Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia


John Hart is an American author of five mystery-thriller novels that have achieved both popular and critical acclaim—and that have garnered him several major awards.

Hart was born and raised in North Carolina; his father was a surgeon and his mother a French teacher. Spending a year in France and learning the language, he decided to major in French at Davidson College (north of Charlotte, North Carolina). After college, Hart tried his hand at writing and completed his first novel, though it remains unpublished. He went on to earn his Master's in Accounting at the University of North Carolina, headed to Juneau, Alaska, for a spell with his two sisters, and eventually returned to school for his law degree at the University of New Hampshire. He wrote a second novel while there, but that, too, went unpublished.

Hart returned to Salisbury, North Carolina, where he practiced law for three years—until he was assigned a case involving the defense of a child murderer. Deciding the law wasn't for him, he left the law practice and returned to his first love, writing. He spent just shy of a year buried in the local library writing what would become his first published work, The King of Lies.

Initially rejected by publishers, he and his wife Katie, also a North Carolinian, moved to Greensboro where Hart worked as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. That was when he decided to revisit and revise The King of Lies and send it out again. This time it was scooped up by the second publisher who saw it. It was published by St. Martin's Press in 2006 and became an immediate bestseller.

Four more books followed, most recently the 2016 Redemption Road. His books have accrued awards, including two back-to-back Edgar Allan Poe Awards for Best Novel, in 2008 and 2010—he is the only writer to have done so. (He won for Down River and The Last Child). Over two million of his books are in print.

He and Katie now live with their children in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he writes full time.

Novels
2006 - The King of Lies
2007 - Down River (Edgar Allan Poe Award)
2009 - The Last Child (Edgar Allan Poe Award, Ian Flemming Silver Dagger, Barry Award)
2011 - Iron House
2016 - Redemption Road.

(Visit the author's website.)