Gary Hicks, born in Tredegar, worked on the 'South Wales Echo' and 'Western Mail', before becoming a Westminster lobby correspondent. He later spun for global corporations and the UK government, travelling worldwide with prime ministers from Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher. His two previous books were 'Fate's Bookie: How the Lottery Shaped the World' (History Press, 2009) and 'The First Adman: Thomas Bish and the Birth of Modern Advertising' (Victorian Secrets, 2012). He completed 'Girl in a Green Gown: the History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait' which his wife, the Cambridge art historian Carola Hicks, had been writing at the time of her death. This unravelling of the secrets of van Eyck's enigmatic double portrait in London's National Gallery was published in 2011 (Chatto and Windus). This is Gary's first novel. He lives in London.