After graduating from Oxford, Bernard O'Keeffe taught English for many years before turning to crime writing. He has published five novels in the DI Garibaldi series, The Final Round (2021), Private Lessons (2023), Every Trick in the Book (2024) and The Masked Band (2025). The Carousel of Time is published in February 2026. He describes DI Garibaldi as "the bastard son of Morse and Montalbano" and admits to sharing several things with his detective Irish Italian ancestry, an inability to drive, a love of country music and a QPR season ticket. He lives in Barnes, the leafy area of south-west London where the novels are set.