Christina Hoag is an award‑winning journalist and novelist whose reporting career spanned Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. She’s had her laptop searched by Colombian guerrillas, her phone tapped in Venezuela, was suspected of drug trafficking in Guyana, hid under a car to evade Guatemalan soldiers, and once posed as a nun to get inside a Caracas jail.

      She has interviewed gang members, gunmen, thieves, bank robbers, and thugs in prisons and shantytowns — along with billionaires and presidents, some of whom arguably belong in the former category. These experiences now shape the gritty realism of her crime thrillers and noir fiction.

      Her novels include Skin of Tattoos, Law of the Jungle, and Girl on the Brink. She is also the author of I Am the Famous Carlos: The Story of the Jackal, the World’s First Celebrity Terrorist and Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence. Her short stories and essays have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies.

       Born in New Zealand, Christina grew up in seven countries and lived in three more as a journalist. She now resides in Southern California.