Timothy Hallinan (born 1949) is an American thriller writer based in Southern California and Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, Hallinan created the erudite private investigator Simeon Grist, who appeared in six novels set in Los Angeles. The series received wide and good reviews, with some titles appearing on critics’ Top Ten lists for the year in which they appeared, such as The Drood Mystery Review, but did not achieve widespread popularity.
Hallinan returned to publishing in 2007 with his second series, set in Bangkok, where he has lived since the early 1980s. The first book in the series is A Nail Through the Heart (William Morrow). The fourth book, The Queen of Patpong, was nominated for the Edgar and Man Booker Prizes. The sixth, For the Dead, was selected by the New York Times Book Review to represent Thailand in its article “Thrillers from Around the World.”
In 2011, he launched a third series featuring Junior Bender, a burglar who serves as a private investigator for the elite of the Los Angeles underworld. The fourth book, Herbie’s Game, won the Lefty Award for Best Comic Mystery Novel in 2015.
In his non-writing career, Hallinan has worked as a consultant to corporations, advising on television sponsorships and audience engagement. He also created Hallinan Consulting, a firm that created educator websites on behalf of a number of public television programs, including The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Slavery in America, and The Supreme Court. He now writes full time.
He has also edited two books. “Shaken: Stories for Japan” featured original stories by top mystery writers and raised more than $100,000 to help tsunami victims, with every penny going directly to Japan. “Making Story: 21 Writers and How They Plot” contained practical plotting ideas from well-known mystery and thriller authors.