Born in Compton, Surrey, Margaret Yorke - Books for Sale - Free Delivery she spent her childhood in Dublin, moving to England in 1937. During World War II she worked as a hospital librarian, then at eighteen she joined the WRNS as a driver. She now lives in Long Crendon oldnewsjulytoseptember in Buckinghamshire.

She published her first novel Summer Flight in 1957, and in Dead in the Morning invented an Oxford Don sleuth, Patrick Grant, who shared her love of Shakespeare. Her most recent novels are A Case to Answer (2000) and Cause for Concern (2001).

She was chairman of the Crime Writers Association in 1979-80. She was awarded the 1999 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, and the 1982 Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection for The Scent of Fear.