Charles John Harper is an attorney and an Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee who has had several short stories published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Black Cat Weekly. In 2023, “Backstory,” which appeared in AHMM, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Short Story by the Mystery Writers of America. It was also featured on the podcast Rabia Chaudry Presents The Mystery Hour. Prior to that, a Darrow Nash short story, “Lovers and Thieves,” was chosen by John Sandford for The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. The review of that anthology in Publishers Weekly declared that “Charles John Harper’s hard-boiled yarn, ‘Lovers and Thieves,’ will make fans of the subgenre hope that its PI lead, Darrow Nash, will walk the mean streets of L.A. again.” A subsequent Darrow Nash story, “Smoke and Mirrors,” was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2026, edited by Megan Abbott and Steph Cha, and The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2026, edited by S. J. Rozan and Michael Bracken. He has also been shortlisted twice for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Dana.