Owen Matthew Sellers Laukkanen (born February 20, 1983) is a Canadian mystery writer, the creator of the Stevens and Windermere series, among other novels.

Although he knew nothing about poker, he was hired by PokerListings.com and jet-setted around the world for the next three years, covering matches in exotic locales like Monaco and Macau.

[4] The novel centers around four university students who, because of their poor job prospects, decide to embark on a career of kidnapping.

Midlevel executives, hedge-fund managers, guys with enough money to make the job worthwhile, with families to pay the ransoms, but with no glamour to their names.

Laukkanen comes from a sea-faring family—his grandfather, uncle and father all were fishermen—and Gale Force is a story about the marine salvage business.

The book introduces a new heroine, McKenna Rhodes, skipper of a salvage tug called the Gale Force, and her efforts to rescue a capsized freighter in the northern Pacific near Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

In 2019, Laukkanen published Deception Cove, a novel about an ex-marine, a widow, who was discharged with PTSD, and an ex-convict who team up to rescue a dog named Lucy.

His third Young Adult Novel, The Wild (2021) was published under his name and was picked up for development with director Patrick Brice and HBO's streaming service Max.