Michael Robotham grew up in Casino and in Gundagai, New South Wales. In 1979, he began his journalism cadetship on a Sydney newspaper. In 1986, he left Australia to live in England where he became a Fleet Street journalist.
After fourteen years in journalism, he became a ghostwriter, and the pseudonymous author of ten best-selling non-fiction titles involving prominent overseas figures in the military, the arts, sport and science.
Robotham returned to Sydney with his family in 1996. His first novel, The Suspect, was published in 2004. He has since published over ten more novels, becoming one of Australia's most internationally recognised crime writers. His work has won the Ned Kelly Award more than once and, in 2014, the Gold Dagger, the UK Crime Writers' Association's highest award, only previously won once by an Australian, John Bryson for Evil Angels. (Jane Harper subsequently won it for The Dry.)