西蒙•贝克特（Simon Beckett），自由记者，为英国多家报纸与期刊撰写各类题材的专题报导。他曾在好几个乐队任打击乐手，也曾多次帮助警察搜寻毒品，并亲身参与过一些警匪对决枪战。

贝克特创作的以法医人类学家大卫•亨特博士为主角的系列侦探小说自出版以来，即在全球市场大获成功。他不仅因此而成为2009年、2010英国最畅销作家，也横扫德国的各大畅销书排行榜，被评为全欧最畅销的作家之一。在美国，他的作品也荣登亚马逊网上书店、巴诺连锁书店和《纽约时报》畅销书榜的前列。目前，他的这个系列小说已被译为30种文字。

目前，他居住于英国城市谢菲尔德，潜心于继续其“法医人类学家探案系列小说”的创作。

A field of corpses, laid out in a macabre display…A serial killer who confounds even the most seasoned profilers…A doctor whose life has been shattered by crime—plunged into the heart of a shocking investigation… In this masterful new novel by Simon Beckett, #1 internationally bestselling author of Written in Bone and The Chemistry of Death , forensic anthropologist David Hunter is thrust into his first murder investigation on U.S. soil—and his most devastating case yet.

In the heat of a Tennessee summer, Dr. Hunter has come to Knoxville’s legendary “Body Farm”—the infamous field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses—to escape London and the violence that nearly destroyed his life. He’s also here to find out if he’s still up to the job of sorting through death in all its strange and terrible forms.… Hunter will soon find his answer when he’s called to a crime scene in a remote Smoky Mountain cabin—a scene as grisly as it is bizarre.

The body is taped to a table. Everything about the crime scene—the wounds, the decomposition, the microscopic evidence—quickly short-circuits the tools and methods of forensic experts. Within days, Hunter knows he’s dealing with a serial killer, someone intimately familiar with the intricacies of forensics. All around him, egos and hierarchies clash—from the boasts of a renowned criminal profiler to the dogged work of a young female investigator—but fate keeps pushing Hunter further into the heart of the manhunt. And the killer keeps coming up with surprises: booby-trapping corpses, faking times of death, swapping bodies—finally turning his sights on after Hunter himself.…

An electrifying race against time, a fascinating journey into the world of forensic science, and a terrifying portrait of a killer in love with death itself , Whispers of the Dead is a thriller of the highest order.