Thomas Leveritt is half-American, half-British. This is his first novel. He has won the Carroll Medal for Portraiture from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In addition, he has: programmed computers, aid-worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an Army Scholarship into the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, a Law Scholarship into Middle Temple, 28 cousins in Texas, and held the UK distribution rights for the very excellent beer Sarajevo Pivo.