LONDON - Novelist and former journalist Susie Steiner, best known for writing the Manon Bradshaw detective series, has died from a brain tumour aged 51. Steiner wrote three DS Bradshaw books including 2016’s Missing, Presumed, which was shortlisted for the Theakston crime novel award and picked for the Richard and Judy Book Club. It has sold 250,000 copies in the UK. Marian Keyes led the tributes, writing: “Her books were absolutely wonderful, Manon Bradshaw was a great character.” Steiner had previously been a journalist for 20 years, writing for The Guardian, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph and The Times. In May 2019, she was diagnosed with brain cancer, a grade 4 glioblastoma, and her website said she spent most of 2019 having treatment comprising six hours of brain surgery, chemo radiation, and six cycles of chemotherapy. Her first novel, 2013’s Homecoming, was well received by critics. That was followed by Missing, Presumed, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and chosen as a standout book for The Guardian and Wall Street Journal. The sequel, Persons Unknown, along with the third book in the DS Bradshaw series, 2020’s Remain Silent, were both longlisted for the Theakstons prize.
She told the Guardian in 2020 that she had written Remain Silent with a “nine-centimetre tumour pushing my brain over its midline. But I didn’t know about it”. She was also registered blind after losing her eyesight to retinitis pigmentosa.
She wrote in the Independent in 2016: “My sight loss, which has begun to limit me only in the last five years, has accompanied an increase in my creative output as a novelist.