Danuta Reah's work as a part-time university lecturer in English Language and Linguistics, and her research into the link between language disorders and criminal behaviour has given her an insight into the darker side of life. Crime runs in the family: one of her ancestors, John Woodcock, was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1646.

Danuta made her crime debut in 1999 with ‘Only Darkness’ the rights to which have recently been purchased by Escazel Films. She has written five books: Only Darkness, Silent Playgrounds, Night Angels, Bleak Water. Her fifth novel, The Forest of Souls (writing as Carla Banks) came out in March 2005. She has published text books in linguistics as well as crime fiction. She is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and literary festivals, and has appeared on radio and television.

Her current project - apart from working on book five - is travelling the Trans-Siberian railway. So far, she has only managed the Moscow-Ekaterinburg leg. “I’m taking a modular approach.” She is married and lives in South Yorkshire with her husband who is an artist.

Danuta Reah writes dark psychological suspense novels, with a new European focus.

For more information go to danutareah.co.uk

Publications

The Forest of Souls - Writing as Carla Banks A gripping psychological thriller, taking the reader from 21st century Britain to the darkest days of war-torn Eastern Europe. A passion for history had already cost Helen Kovacs her marriage. Now she's paid with her life. Helen had told no one of her research into the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. Even her closest friend and colleague, Faith Lange, had no idea - until she began retracing the dead woman's steps. Though the police have a suspect in custody, Faith is convinced that the murderer is still at large. And she is troubled, too, by the presence of Jake Denbigh, a journalist who appears to be investigating her grandfather, Marek, a refugee from the Eastern front. Everything hinges on the memories of a 75-year-old whose will to survive preserved her through the horrors of minsk and the concentration camps, and enabled her to make a new life in England with her son. Helen's murder and its consequences will take Jake and faith on terrifying journeys: to Byelorussia where the mass graves of the kurapaty Forest have their own dreadful tale to tell; and into the heart of Faith's own family where a tragi c secret lies hidden.

Bleak Water - Published By HarperCollins 1999 The canal that runs through the centre of Sheffield used to carry the industrial freight for the steel industry. It is being renovated for leisure pursuits, but away from the city centre developments, the canal is overgrown, run down and deserted. An arts trust has established a small but innovative gallery in one of the old warehouses by the canal, and Eliza Eliot, the curator, sees her career about to take off when she's given the opportunity to show the latest exhibition by well-known artist Daniel Flynn. The exhibition is a series of reworkings of Brueghel's painting, The Triumph of Death, and Eliza begins to realize that Flynn may have more complex motives for allowing his work to be shown at a small gallery in a provincial city. But she is distracted, first by the repercussions of the murder, four years before, of a friend's daughter, followed by the friend's death in a car accident just before the book opens. Then a young woman who lives in one of the flats above the gallery is found dead in the canal, while a teenage girl also goes missing in an apparently unrelated case. Events take a sinister turn at the gallery as the nightmare images from Daniel Flynn's exhibition start to spill out into the real world. Is this the work of a psychopath, or is there some link between present violence and the tragedy of four years ago?

Night Angels - Published By HarperCollins 2000 Snake Pass, the Peak District: The car of Gemma Wishart, a young researcher in Russian languages, is discovered, abandoned, by a walker; the driver has vanished without trace. Over in Hull, the body of a woman is discovered battered to death in a hotel bathroom; the only clue to her identity is a card bearing the name of an escort agency notorious for its suspected trafficking in Eastern European prostitutes. For Detective Inspector Lynne Jordan, the missing academic and the murder victim have a tenuous connection. Jordan is in charge of a police operation to stamp out the illegal trade in human flesh and Wishart was helping her with transcripts of an interview with one such woman, who has subsequently turned up dead in the Humber Estuary. But it's possible there is another, even darker, force at work, and when two more bodies turn up, Lynne is forced to conclude there may be a serial killer on the loose.

Silent Playground - Published By HarperCollins 2001 The path through the park runs from the centre of the city into the wilds of the countryside. At weekends the area is a playground for children and walkers, but during the week it is silent and deserted. When six-year-old Lucy gets lost there one day, her disappearance sparks a chain of events leading to the murder of a young woman. Lucy tries to warn the people she cares about of the danger: she knows that there are monsters lurking in the rambling park, and she knows that they are getting closer. What should be a straightforward investigation leads DI Steve McCarthy into a web of lies and evasions, where nothing is quite as it seems and everyone seems to be hiding something. With each step forward McCarthy faces new questions, and if he is to prevent an escalation in violence, he has to find some answers - fast.

Only Darkness - Published By HarperCollins 2002 Dark, edgy and unbearably tense, this extraordinarily accomplished first novel is both a love story and a gripping psychological thriller of immense power. Debbie Sykes is a young college lecturer whose ordered life is about to be changed forever. One stormy winter's night, waiting for the late train home, Debbie is acutely aware of being alone -- the woman who usually shares her evening vigil is not there. Vulnerability turns to fear, though, when she turns to see a sinister figure looming between her and the safety of the street. The next day, she hears that the missing woman has been found murdered by the man they call the Strangler, a brutal killer who dumps his victims on isolated stretches of railway track. The police renew their efforts to find the murderer before he strikes again, but how much time do they really have? When Debbie's story is publicized by an unscrupulous journalist, it seems as though the jaws of an invisible trap are beginning to close around her -- strange things start to happen and the foundations of Debbie's life subtly shift. Only Rob Neave, ex-policeman and college security officer, appears aware of the danger but he is distracted by his own tragic past. The clock is ticking, and it will be midnight far sooner than anyone thinks.