Meg Gardiner (born May 15, 1957) is an American thriller writer and author of fifteen published books.
Meg attended Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, a community just north of Santa Barbara, graduating in June 1975.
[5] Following graduation, she attended Stanford University, where she attained her Bachelor's degree in Economics and lettered in track.
In June 1987, competing as Meg Shreve, she became a 3-time champion on Jeopardy!, winning $29,799 (along with a stay at Beaver Creek Resort in Vail, Colorado, as her prize for coming in second place in her fourth game).
In earlier incarnations, I practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
After living in California most of my life, in the early 1990s, I moved with my family to the United Kingdom", said Gardiner.
[citation needed] It was during her freedom in those early years in the UK that she wrote her first novel, completing a task she'd set for herself a decade earlier.
"[10] She likes thriller fiction "because it grabs readers, takes them on a menacing ride to places they'd hate to go in real life and returns them safely, feeling thrilled.
"[11] As the daughter of an English professor, "I was obviously in a home where books and reading and writing mattered," Gardiner told the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper.
Gratuitous, protracted, explicit violence is sometimes offered as a feast, and portrayed with such lurid and eager detail that it becomes almost pornographic.
"[8] Gardiner has described Evan Delaney as a woman who is "spirited, quick-witted, and fights hard for the people she loves .
Pour her a glass of Jack Daniel's and ask her about finding that FBI agent hogtied to her bed, stripped and ranting.
"[12] The lead character in Gardiner's second series, Jo Beckett, MD, is a forensic psychiatrist from San Francisco.
Interviewed by Poe's Deadly Daughters, Gardiner explained Beckett's role in this way: "Jo calls herself a deadshrinker.
When the cops and the medical examiner can't determine the manner of a victim's death, they turn to Jo to perform a psychological autopsy and figure out whether it was accident, suicide, or murder.
"[13] Gardiner has summarized Beckett's work in this way: "Jo doesn't pick up gory bits of trace evidence with tweezers.
In his Entertainment Weekly column, Stephen King said, "I need to tell you about Meg Gardiner, who simply must be part of the Big Plan.
"[15] King called the Evan Delaney novels "simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I've come across in the last twenty years.