Charles John Harper is an attorney and an Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee who has had several short stories published in both Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. In 2023, “Backstory,” which appeared in AHMM, was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best short story by the Mystery Writers of America. Prior to that, a Darrow Nash short story, “Lovers and Thieves,” was selected 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.” He has also been shortlisted twice for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Dana.