Born in Geneva, Mark Mills grew up on a farm on the South Downs in Sussex. He was educated at Lancing College, near Brighton. After leaving Cambridge University, where he studied History and History of Art, he went to live in Italy, south of Siena. On returning to England a couple of years later, he got a job as a reader for Paramount Pictures, who had recently opened an office in London. Reading film scripts gradually gave way to writing them.

Mark’s first book, The Whaleboat House (a.k.a. Amagansett), started life as a film idea, although it soon became clear that it was better suited to a novel. This marked a pleasing move into the world of written prose, of crime fiction. He is the author of seven novels.