California-born crime novelist J.D. Knight worked 10 years at the City of Oakland on a variety of public safety projects, including the creation of web-based crime incident maps for public use in community policing.

Knight’s first novel ZERO TOLERANCE (Bantam Doubleday Dell) was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America, and lauded as “an impressive debut” by bestselling author Richard North Patterson.

Most of the procedural research for Knight’s fiction was acquired by riding along with Oakland Police and Fire response units during the ‘dogwatch’ shifts.

Knight studied creative writing at UC Berkeley under many award-winning teachers, including Leonard Michaels, Thom Gunn, Louise Glück and Ishmael Reed.

Because of his mother’s indigenous roots in northeastern Oklahoma, J.D. Knight is a registered citizen of the Cherokee Nation.