Jane Robins’s first love was journalism. For several years, she worked for The Economist as a foreign correspondent based in India and then Hong Kong. Back in the UK, she joined the BBC and became editor of Radio 4’s Week in Westminster. She was then the media editor at The Independent on Sunday.

When her son was young, she left journalism for a less frenetic life, and to follow her dream of writing books. Her first three works tell the story of historical criminal trials that gripped the nation – Queen Caroline’s trial for adultery in 1820, the Brides in the Bath murder case in 1915 and the case of serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams in 1957.

Her debut novel, White Bodies, a psychological thriller, was long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Prize.

She now lives in Cambridge and writes crime novels under the name Lara Finch.