Dorothy James was born in Wales and grew up in the South Wales Valleys. Writer, editor, translator, she has published short stories as well as books and articles on German and Austrian literature. She has taught at universities in the U.S., England and Germany, makes her home now in Brooklyn and often spends time in Vienna and Berlin. She wrote A Place to Die in her attic apartment on the edge of the Vienna Woods. She has travelled far from Wales, but has not lost the Welsh love of playing with language; she writes poems for pleasure as does Chief Inspector Büchner, the whimsical Viennese detective who unravels the first mystery in this new series of novels.