Paul Cleave (born 10 December 1974) is a crime fiction author from New Zealand. Life Paul Cleave is an internationally bestselling author who is currently dividing his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where all of his novels are set, and Europe. His work has been translated into 18 languages. He has won the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel in New Zealand three times, he won the Saint-Maur book festival's crime novel of the year in France, has been shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Barry Award in the US, and shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award in Australia. Writing His first published novel, The Cleaner, was released by Random House in 2006 and became an international best-seller with sales exceeding 500,000. It was the top-selling crime/thriller title for 2007 on Amazon in Germany. It was also shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing. In September 2009, Cleave's novel Cemetery Lake was published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books. When talking about setting his books in Christchurch in an article in Crime Time magazine, Cleave said: "Christchurch is a great setting for crime – it has two sides to it, there's the picture perfect setting you see on postcards everywhere, but there's also a dark, Gotham City feel here which has, sadly, turned this city into the murder capital of New Zealand. I love making Christchurch a character for the books, creating an 'alternate' version of the city, where the main character often muses that 'Christchurch is broken'." His fourth novel, Blood Men, was released in February 2010. In 2011, Paul was nominated as a finalist in the Ngaio Marsh Best Crime Novel Award, alongside fellow authors, Neil Cross, Paddy Richardson, and Greg Mckee aka Alix Bosco. Cleave won the award for the book Blood Men, which was published in 2010. His fifth novel, entitled Collecting Cooper (2011), is again set in his home town of Christchurch (the setting for all his novels) and sees the return of Theodore Tate, who was introduced in Cemetery Lake. His sixth novel, The Laughterhouse (2012), features Theodore Tate tracking down a crime that started 15 years earlier when he was a rookie officer. His seventh novel, Joe Victim (2013), features Joe Middleton (from The Cleaner) and follows his story from the moment that The Cleaner ends. His eighth novel, Five Minutes Alone (2014), features