J.C. Maetis is better known as British thriller writer John Matthews whose books have sold over 1.6 million copies and been translated in 14 languages. Maetis is his father’s original Jewish family name, which he felt was more fitting for this novel. His father's family left Lithuania for London in 1919 in the wake of Jewish pogroms there, but many of his extended family perished when Hitler invaded Lithuania in 1941. Maetis lives in Surrey, UK.