Charles Lambert was born in 1953 in Lichfield, England. In 1976 he moved to Milan and, apart from brief spells in Ireland, Portugal and London, has lived and worked in Italy since then. His first novel, Little Monsters, a Good Housekeeping selection and described by John Harding (Daily Mail) as 'beautifully written and crafted, and more compelling than many thrillers', was published in 2008, the same year as his collection of prize-winning stories, The Scent of Cinnamon and Other Stories; the title story won an O. Henry Prize. Any Human Face, his second novel and the first in a trilogy set in modern-day Rome, was welcomed as a 'a sophisticated literary thriller' by the Guardian, while for the Telegraph's Jake Kerridge it is 'a slow-burning, beautifully written crime story that brings to life the Rome that tourists don't see.' The second novel in the trilogy, The View from the Tower, was published in January 2014. It was followed by an autobiographical fiction, With a Zero at its Heart, named as one The Guardian's top ten books of 2014.