Robert E. Bailey spent half a decade as a corporate security director in the city of Detroit and twenty years as a licensed private investigator. An award-winning combat pistol shot, Bailey returned to his first love, writing, when he was injured on the job and no longer able to work the street. His first novel, Private Heat, an action-packed thriller featuring private investigator Art Hardin, won the Josiah W. Bancroft Award at the Florida First Coast Writer’s Festival in 1998 and was a finalist for the 2003 Shamus Award, given by the Private Eye Writers of America. His second novel, Dying Embers, also featuring Hardin, was a 2004 finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award, Also in January 2007, Mystery Scene magazine named Art Hardin one of its top 100 private eyes.

Sadly, Robert Bailey passed away in 2013. His wife, Linda, and a good writing friend of Bob’s have worked together to complete the edits on his final work, Déjà Noir, from Ignition Books^®.