Brad Parks

Brad Parks is an American mystery and thriller novel writer. Brad Parks was born on 13 July 1974 in New Jersey. He was brought up in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He went to Ridgefield High School. He started writing for his high school sports in the hometown newspaper, The Ridgefield Press. He was 14 years old when he started writing.

He started his own newspaper called The Sports Weekly at his college, Dartmouth College. He also sang with the co-ed a cappella group of his college, the Dodecaphonics. He then worked at The Boston Globe as an intern. He graduated from Dartmouth in the year 1996 with the honor of Phi Beta Kappa. He started off as an intern for The Washington Post, but very soon he was hired for full-time. He got assigned to a bureau in Manassas, Virginia. He left and then started working with The Star-Ledger as a sports writer. He later started writing news feature. He published a four-part series Crossroads in 2007, a special on the riots in Newark in 1967. It won the top prize at the New Jersey Press Association. Presently, he lives with his wife in Virginia. They have two children.

At the age of 26, Brad started writing in a cafe with Barnes & Noble just to kill time when his wife was graduating. In 2004, he published his first novel called Faces of the Gone. The Newark quadruple homicide was the inspiration behind this novel. The novel was sold to Martin’s Press in 2008 and published on 8 December 2009. The novel gained a lot of publicity in a very less time and won the Shamus Award in 2010 for best first novel. He also won Nero Award in the category of best American mystery. It is the only book to date to have won both the awards.

He released his second book on his reporting of Subprime mortgage crisis called Eyes of the Innocent. This book also gained success with starred reviews from The Wall Street Journal and Library Journal. His third book was The Girl Next Door which won the Lefty Award for the best humorous mystery novel. This resulted in Brad being the only writer to have won all the three prestigious awards in the mystery writing. The book described the struggles of women in the newspaper industry. His fourth book was The Good Cop in 2012. The subject of the book was illegal gun smuggling and suicide in the Newark police department. It won a Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Novel.

His fifth book was The Player, a book in Carter Ross series. It was about toxic waste and organized crime which received reviews from major posts. In 2015, Brad published his sixth book, The player and in 2017, Say Nothing. Brad is described as one of the best mystery writers and has entered the top echelon in the mystery world.