M. J. Carter

M. J. Carter is the fiction-writing name of British historian and biographer Miranda Carter. She studied history at the University of Oxford and worked in publishing and journalism before becoming a full-time author. Writing as Miranda Carter, she published Anthony Blunt: His Lives, an acclaimed biography of the art historian and Soviet spy that won the Orwell Prize and a Royal Society of Literature award, and The Three Emperors, a study of George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II in the years leading to the First World War.

As M. J. Carter, she created the Blake and Avery historical mystery series, featuring the enigmatic former East India Company agent Jeremiah Blake and junior officer William Avery. The Strangler Vine begins in Calcutta in 1837 and examines Company rule, colonial violence and British myths about India; The Printer’s Coffin, originally published as The Infidel Stain, moves the investigators into the radical press and criminal underworld of Victorian London; and The Devil’s Feast centres on a suspicious death at the Reform Club in 1842. The novels combine murder investigations and adventure with detailed examinations of empire, class, political reform and the contradictions of early Victorian society.