Lucretia Grindle is one of four children of newspaper reporter turned entrepreneur Paul Davidson Grindle and his wife Patricia Walsh. She has a sister and two brothers. She was born in Boston MA, and spent her formative years living with her family either at her parents' American home in Sherborn MA, or at their British home in the village of Benenden, near Tunbridge Wells, where Grindle was first brought at the age of six months. Her mother, who before her marriage had spent five years as a circus bareback rider, was the longtime operator of the Moat Houseriding academy in Benenden. Grindle graduated with a degree in religion from Dartmouth College, and subsequently studied theology and philosophy at Oxford University. She then worked as a freelance journalist – said to specialize in "feature length profile work and sport" – in both the US and UK and also in Canada. She was also for a time a horse breeder and professional jockey.
Writing career
Grindle's first two published novels, the Pocket Books-issued The Killing of Ellis Martin and So Little to Die For, both featured elements of the cozy mystery genre and had a common central character in British police inspector H. W. Ross. Later recalling the first phase of her career as a novelist Grindle would remember writing "two books for every one that was published", and her third published novel would not appear until 2003 when she made her hardcover debut with the psychological suspense novelThe Nightspinners which was shortlisted for the Silver Dagger awarded by the CWA. The Faces of Angels, published in the UK in 2006 and cited by BBC Radio 4's Front Row as one of the six best thrillers of the year, was the first of three novels by Grindle to combine elements of psychological suspense with the police procedural genre in an Italian setting, having a common character in Florentine ispettore Alessandro Pallioti, with the two followup novels having the additional dimension of "interweaving modern plots with story lines set critical moments in Italian 20th century history. The Villa Triste is the story of two sisters living in Florence in 1943, during the partisan resistance to Nazi occupation. The Lost Daughter is based on the kidnapping and murder of Italian politician and former Prime MinisterAldo Moro in 1978." Grindle's choice of Florence as her preferred literary locale is said to be the result of several trips she and her husband made to Florence in the first years of the 21st century. Their first trip was occasioned when, in the wake of the 9/11 crisis of 2001, Grindle the couple had a discussion about "what they would choose to do if the world were going to fly to pieces." Grindle opined: "I want to go to the Uffizi. If World War III is going to break out, let's go to Florence." The Faces of Angels was nominated for an Edgar Award for best original paperback novel for 2012 the novel being published that year as a US trade paperback; The Villa Triste – longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger award upon its 2010 UK publication – was published in the US in 2013 while The Lost Daughter had UK and US publishing dates of respectively 2011 and 2015. In December 2017 Grindle was said to be working on a novel dealing with the Sicilian mafia of the late 20th century.
Personal life
Grindle is married to David Mansfield Lutyens. In 2003 the couple were said to have been living between Devon, England, and the US state of Massachusetts. In 2008 they settled in Blue Hill, Maine, the ancestral home of the Grindle family and the birthplace of Grindle's father.
