Karin Alvtegen was born in J¿nk¿ping, Sweden, in 1965 and had a varied career, including work in set design for film and stage, before she started to write. She won Sweden's most prestigious crime novel award, the Glass Key, in 2000 with her novel, Missing, and further acclaim with her next two novels, Betrayal and Shame. She is the great-neice of Astrid Lindgren (author of the Pippi Longstocking stories), and lives in Stockholm.