Scottish writer Karen Campbell is the author of six novels, most recently Rise and This is Where I Am, both published by Bloomsbury Circus. Her previous books include The Twilight Time, After the Fire, Shadowplay and Proof of Life – all Hodder & Stoughton.
A graduate of Glasgow University’s Creative Writing Masters, Karen also teaches creative writing and carries out freelance communications training.
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Her fifth novel, published in 2013, breaks away from the crime series. It tells the story of Abdi, a Somali asylum-seeker newly arrived in Glasgow with his young daughter, and of recently widowed Deborah, who has been assigned as mentor to help them settle in.
Campbell is a vivid, distinctive writer who creates characters and stories we really care about. There’s a peculiar kind of pleasure and anxiety for her readers as we watch Justine with the Andersons. Her damaged past grants her a more loving connection with each of them than they can manage with one another. But Charlie Boy is coming, and in her desperate efforts to remain hidden Justine draws little Ross into danger. Glimpsed mostly in stream-of-consciousness moments, Charlie Boy is viscerally scary: “He canny contain this fury. If he finds her . . . if he starts kicking, he won’t be able to stop.” – ny times
The novel was selected as the BBC Radio Four Book at Bedtime in April 2013.
She was born in Paisley and brought up in Glasgow. Both her mother and father worked in Strathclyde Police, and following a degree at Glasgow University, she also joined the police, where she met her husband.
Karen studied for the Creative Writing master’s degree at Glasgow University.