Media Pack for Clare Mackintosh

Clare Mackintosh was born in Bristol and grew up in Buckinghamshire, attending Aylesbury High School before spending a year as a hotel receptionist in Paris. She read French and Management at Royal Holloway University; a degree which included a year working as a bilingual P.A. in Paris.

Following graduation, she joined Thames Valley Police. She began her career as a uniform response officer in Cowley, Oxford, and qualified as a detective within the Criminal Investigation Department at St Aldates’ police station, before taking promotion to sergeant in Chipping Norton. At the rank of inspector she specialised in operations, working as a protest liaison officer and public order commander. She received three Chief Constable commendations during her 12-year career.

In 2006, following IVF treatment, Clare became pregnant with twins who were born three months premature in December 2006. Her oldest son contracted meningitis while in neonatal intensive care and died at the age of five weeks. When her surviving twin was four months old, Clare fell naturally pregnant with twins, born in February 2008.

In 2011, Clare embarked on a two-year career break to look after her children. She became a columnist for Cotswold Life magazine and contributed freelance articles to a number of publications, with credits including the Guardian, Good Housekeeping and the Telegraph. During this time, she wrote her debut novel, I Let You Go. In 2013 she signed a two-book publishing deal and left the police service in order to write full-time.

I Let You Go was a Richard & Judy book pick, an instant Sunday Times top ten and New York Times bestseller, and the fastest selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. In 2016 it won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the Cognac Festival’s Prix du Polar Best International Crime Novel. It has been translated into 40 languages and sold over a million copies.

Clare subsequently published a further seven novels, including I See You (a number one Sunday Times bestseller), Let Me Lie, Hostage, and the Ffion Morgan series, which is currently being developed for television. Her non-fiction work includes A Cotswold Family Life, a collection of columns written for Cotswold Life; and a grief memoir, I Promise it Won’t Always Hurt Like This: 18 Assurances for Grief.

Collectively, her books have spent more than 60 weeks in the Sunday Times top ten bestseller chart.

In 2026 Clare published a standalone thriller, It’s Not What You Think.