Roger Jon Ellory (born 20 June 1965) is an English thriller writer. Personal life Ellory lives in Birmingham, England. He cites Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Moorcock, J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King as people who influenced his writing. He is an avid fan of BookCrossing and apart from his work as an author, he is interested in music. He is currently a singer and guitar player with a band called The Whiskey Poets. Ellory's father is unknown to him, having left the household before Ellory was born. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, his maternal grandfather having drowned in 1957 in Wales. Ellory's mother died as a result of a pneumonic haemorrhage in late 1971, the victim of a pneumonia epidemic that killed a number of people in the West Midlands. Ellory was then sent to a number of different schools, and finally completed his education at Kingham Hill School in Oxfordshire, a school established by the Barings-Young banking family as a facility for "wayward and orphaned children". Leaving this school at 16, Ellory returned to Birmingham, where he pursued a diploma in graphic art and design at Bournville College of Art. After one year, Ellory's maternal grandmother died in April 1982 and Ellory dropped out of college, failing to secure any qualifications. In 2012, Ellory admitted having used a pseudonymous account name to write a positive review for each his own novels, and additionally a negative review for two other authors. He made a public statement of apology, and the aforementioned reviews were withdrawn from Amazon. The Crime Writers' Association, for which Ellory formerly served as a board member, expressed concern about this "unfair" practice, and confirmed it had launched a review. Writing His first novel to be accepted for publication, Candlemoth, was published in 2003 and was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award that year. Ghostheart was published in 2004 and A Quiet Vendetta in 2005. His fourth novel, City of Lies (2006), was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller. A Quiet Belief in Angels was selected as one of the titles in the Richard & Judy Bookclub 2008. A Quiet Belief in Angels has sold more than 1,000,000 copies, and has also been purchased for translation into a total of twenty-three languages. It was ranked third in the Sunday Times bestselling book list in the week of