Allison Brennan

Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty thrillers and one of the most consistently productive voices in American crime fiction. Born on September 29, 1969, in San Carlos, California, she graduated from Menlo School in Atherton, California in 1987 and attended UC Santa Cruz before dropping out after two years to figure out what she actually wanted to do with her life. The answer, as it turned out, involved a long detour: she worked as a bartender, campaign manager, graphic designer, administrative assistant, and waitress — writing stories in her spare time throughout all of it.

From 1992 to 2005, Brennan worked as a consultant in the California State Legislature, a career spanning thirteen years that gave her an insider's understanding of institutions, investigations, and the way bureaucracies function under pressure — all of which would later inform her fiction. In 2005, she sold her first novel and quit her job in the same move. It was an enormous leap of faith that paid off immediately. The Prey, the first book in her Predator Trilogy, was published in January 2006 and won the Borders Books Bestselling Debut Author of the year award. It launched one of the most prolific and beloved careers in the thriller genre. She married Dan Brennan in 1993, and they have five children.

Over the following two decades, Brennan built an interlocking fictional universe of FBI agents, detectives, and investigators across a dozen interconnected series. The Predator Trilogy (2005–2006) was followed by the No Evil Trilogy (2007), the Prison Break Trilogy (2008), and the FBI Trilogy (2009), establishing her as a master of the fast-paced, character-driven procedural. Her longest and most beloved series, the Lucy Kincaid books (2010–2020), ran to seventeen novels and remains a fan favorite. The Max Revere series (2014–2016) introduced an investigative journalist protagonist, with Compulsion (2015) winning the Daphne du Maurier Award for Best Mainstream Mystery/Suspense.

In 2020, Brennan launched what has become her highest-profile ongoing series: the Quinn & Costa Thrillers, following edgy LAPD detective Kara Quinn and ambitious FBI special agent Mathias Costa as they team up to hunt serial and complex killers across the country. The Third to Die, the series opener, was an instant New York Times bestseller. The series has now reached eight books, with Make It Out Alive published in January 2026. Her Angelhart Investigations series, launching in 2024 and following private investigator Margo Angelhart, has already produced four books — with the narrator of its audiobooks, Hillary Huber, winning an Audie Award for You'll Never Find Me.

Brennan is as serious about accuracy as she is about pace. In service of her fiction, she has completed the FBI Citizens Academy (where she was allowed to blow something up), toured the FBI Academy at Quantico, attended autopsies, and participated in SWAT training scenarios as both victim and "bad girl." She is a two-time winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award, a two-time RT Reviewers' Choice Award winner, a five-time RITA Award finalist for Best Romantic Suspense, and has been nominated for the International Thriller Writers award for Best Paperback Original. September 2025 marked the publication of her 50th book. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers, and currently lives in Arizona with her husband and an assortment of pets.

Born: September 29, 1969

Birthplace: San Carlos, California