She has admitted in interviews that she and her brother suffered greatly at the hands of a violent father who told them on a daily basis that they would never amount to anything. The Bookseller, commenting on one of her novels, said ‘Davis understands primal fears from the inside.’
She left school at 15 but later graduated from the University of Dundee with a Master of the Arts degree in criminology. This was followed by a postgraduate diploma in Adult & Community Education from Edinburgh University.
Her first three novels are set in Edinburgh, specifically the district of Marchmont where she lived for many years.
Her debut novel Shrouded has a trainee funeral director as its protagonist. The book charts his alcohol-fuelled descent into necrophilia and sexually-motivated murder. Four reviewers named it as their debut of the year. It was followed by Safe As Houses which explores the murders of a sadistic white collar psychopath and his unsuspecting wife and child. Also Edinburgh-based, Noise Abatement is the most autobiographical of her novels in that, like the protagonist, she endured the neighbours from hell when a band moved into the flat above hers. She fantasized about killing them - but the law abiding man in the novel actually carries out his sleep-deprived desires.
She moved to Salisbury and set her fourth novel, Kiss It Away, there. It’s an unsettling exploration of male-on-male rape and of how society ignores or makes light of this violent crime.
Davis set her fifth novel, Sob Story, in her birthplace of Dundee, charting the journey of an isolated university student and her penpal, a violent prisoner in HMP Maidstone.
Between novels, Carol Anne Davis has written several true crime books, each composed of profiles which profile the killer’s childhood and formative experiences. For Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers, she interviewed the reverend who heard Myra Hindley’s confession and produced what has been called a fair assessment of a complex case.
Children Who Kill: Profiles of Preteen & Teenage Killers includes details of her friendship with the then-youngest boy in Scotland ever to be charged with attempted murder. She also interviewed the detective who caught Britain’s youngest serial killer, Peter Dinsdale, and found unique details about the case.
For Couples Who Kill: Profiles of Deviant Duos, she met one of the West’s surviving victims and corresponded with a convicted British serial killer and a journalist who spent time with one of America’s cruellest torture-killers, now on Death Row.
Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators, included input from a psychiatrist who has successfully treated imprisoned psychopaths by helping them come to terms with their brutalizing childhoods. Becoming aware that sexually-dominant men in consensual relationships were often dismissed by society in the same way as criminal sadists, she included a chapter on consensual sadomasochism for which she interviewed a female masochist.
Youthful Prey: Child Predators Who Killprofiles British, American, Canadian and European homicidal paedophiles and has chapters on treatment options and child protection. An excerpt appeared in The Sunday Times on the anniversary of the victims' deaths.
Davis’ crime, horror, erotic and literary short stories have been showcased in numerous anthologies, and her humorous, true crime and lifestyle features have appeared in various magazines. She is the British true crime expert on the international In Cold Blog.
