Bruce Leonard earned a B.A. in English with a creative-writing emphasis from UCLA. He has been a travel writer, a magazine- and newspaper editor, an owner of a bakery, and a guinea pig for the U.S. Government. He's the author of the award-winning Hadley Carroll Mysteries, based in Paducah, Kentucky. Quilt City Murders, the first in that series, was named Best Mystery of 2022 in one contest.

He will soon begin writing the second Jack Drake Mystery, Stronger at the Break.