Author's Biography

Thomas Rendell Curran was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1939, the year the Second World War started, and ten years before a narrow majority of the island’s population voted to join Newfoundland with Canada as the tenth province. It is no coincidence, then, that his novels are set in the post-war, pre-Confederation Newfoundland of the late 1940’s. His protagonist is Inspector Eric Stride of the Newfoundland Constabulary. (The designation Royal was added to the Constabulary’s title in 1979.) He received his primary and secondary education at Holloway School and Prince of Wales College, in a time when the island’s educational system was set up along religious lines, reflecting the historical religious divisions and animosities on the island, principally between Protestants and Roman Catholics. He graduated with honours from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and later received his Ph.D. (in plant pathology) from the University of Toronto. After graduation, he worked in various capacities for the Canadian Department of Agriculture, and for one memorable year as a lecturer at Carleton University. In his final professional incarnation he was for more than two decades a Senior Researcher and Writer at the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. He is the proud father of two adult daughters who test-read his books, and who sometimes claim to be proud of him.