Susanna Jones

Fifteen years after a climbing tragedy, a woman is finally ready to remember and face the terrible events.

The Earthquake Bird (Mysterious Press, 9/01), Susanna Jones' debut, won the 2001 John Creasey Award, bestowed by the Crime Writers' Association in England, for Best First Novel. Foreign rights were sold in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Norway. It will be published in trade paperback from Mysterious Press in 3/03. Susanna Jones writes chilling, psychological suspense that will appeal to the same audience that made Nicci French's Killing Me Softly (Warner, 7/99) a bestseller. Susanna Jones studies Japanese Noh theatre as part of her drama degree from London University. She lived and worked in Japan before getting her M.A. in writing from Manchester University.

A haunting first novel set in Tokyo, "The Earthquake Bird" reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly -- a young vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator. Lucy grew up in England, and still harbors painful memories of her childhood in Yorkshire. Only her fascination with music and language provide her with a final break from her past, allowing her to move to Tokyo and start a new life as a translator of technical books. There, she begins an intensely erotic affair with a brilliant and secretive photographer named Teiji. But when Lucy befriends Lily Bridges, a young woman who has also fled trouble in Yorkshire, her life begins to unravel. Lucy doesn't like being reminded of what she left behind in England. Nor does she like Teiji's friendship with Lily. Now the police have accused her of killing Lily, because it is becoming apparent that Lucy has had the motive, the means, and the opportunity.