About Dreda and Ryan

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth awarded Dreda an MBE in her New Year’s Honours’ List, 2020! She has appeared on Queen Camilla’s Reading Room. Ryan and Dreda are a wife and husband team who write across the crime and mystery genre - psychological thrillers, gritty gangland crime and fast-paced action books. She scooped the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger Award in 2004, the first time a Black British author has received this honour. Spare Room, their first psychological thriller was a #1 UK and US Amazon Bestseller. Lee Child, named her 2022 novel, Say Her Name his best book of the year so far. She is one of the twelve acclaimed female authors of International Bestselling, Marple, a new reimagined Miss Marple anthology. Dreda is a passionate campaigner and speaker on social issues and the arts.

She has appeared on television, including Celebrity Pointless, Celebrity Eggheads, BBC 1 Breakfast, Sunday Morning Live, Newsnight, The Review Show and Front Row Late on BBC 2. She had Fun! Fun! Fun! With Alan Carr on documentary series, Alan’s Adventures with Agatha Christie Channel 4. Dreda’s Black History Month short story about the remarkable Althea McNish was narrated on Amazon’s Alexa by Sir Trevor MacDonald. Ryan and Dreda both performed a specially commissioned monologue on the ground-breaking SkyArts50 on Sky TV. Dreda has been a guest on many radio shows and presented BBC Radio 4’s flagship books programme, Open Book. She has written in a number of leading newspapers including The Guardian and was thrilled to be named one of Britain’s 50 Remarkable Women by Lady Geek in association with Nokia. She is a Trustee of The Royal Literary Fund and an ambassador for The Reading Agency. Some of their books are currently in development as TV and film adaptations. Dreda’s parents are from the beautiful Caribbean island of Grenada. Her name, Dreda, is Irish and pronounced with a long vowel ee sound in the middle!