Cath was brought up in Bradford and hoped to become an entomologist (insects) then a trapeze artist before settling on acting at the age of eight. She graduated from Birmingham University with a Drama and Theatre Arts degree and moved to work as a community artist in Manchester where she and her family live.

Looking for Trouble, published in 1994, launched private eye Sal, a single parent struggling to juggle work and home, onto Manchester’s mean streets. It was short listed for the Crime Writers Association’s John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, serialised on BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour and awarded  Le Masque de l’Année in France. Cath has published a further seven Sal Kilkenny mysteries.

 

The Fells (shortlisted for The People’s Book Prize) is the first outing for DI Leo Donovan and DC Shan Young set in the stunning landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. A place of fells and valleys, waterfalls and rivers, drystone walls and ruined barns, deep, dark caves and windswept limestone pavements. But what secrets lie buried beneath these rolling green hills?

Cath’s eleven stand-alone novels tell stories of ordinary families caught up in extraordinary events, giving a voice to victims, the bereaved, survivors and witnesses.

Cath is also a scriptwriter, creator of ITV’s hit police drama, Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis, which has sold worldwide in places as diverse as Fiji, Iceland and Yemen. Cath’s Blue Murder novels are published by Joffe Books. Cath  was commissioned to write the Scott & Bailey books based on the popular ITV detective show. Her radio work includes three-part drama thriller, Undercover, where a police officer masquerades as a nanny in order to find out the truth about a missing woman, and Legacy, featuring brother and sister heir hunters. Cath was a writer on Danny Brocklehurst’s Stone detective drama.

The Lost Girls of St Ann’s (previously Trio) marked a move away from crime. A family saga, rooted in Cath’s experience as an adoptee growing up in the 1960s. Reflecting the range of stories she’s heard from other adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents and  capturing the loss that remains for everyone at the heart of adoption.  Cath’s own story, of tracing and being re-united with her Irish birth family and her seven brothers and sisters, featured in the television documentary Finding Cath from RTE.

In addition to the New Blood Dagger, Cath has been short listed (three times) for the Dagger in the Library, twice for the Short Story Dagger, and was joint winner of the Short Story Dagger in 2012. Letters To My Daughter’s Killer was selected for Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club in 2014 and featured on ITV3’s Crime Thriller Club. Cath was joint winner of the WGGB Best Radio Drama Award 2019  for Stone Series 7. Running Out of Road was short-listed for the eDunnit best novel Award at CrimeFest 2022.

Cath is a founder member of Murder Squad, a virtual collective of northern crime writers. She is an avid reader and likes hill-walking, messing about in the garden and dancing (with far more enthusiasm than grace).

@cathstaincliffe.bsky.social

@CathStaincliffe