Crime thriller lands Faber book deal for University author and academic
A novelist and scholar at the University of Exeter has secured the biggest publishing deal of her career.
Dr Emily Bernhard Jackson has signed a three-book deal with Faber, which will include her forthcoming crime-thriller Missing and the next two, as-yet unwritten, entries in the series.
The deal covers the UK, European Union and the Commonwealth countries, with a separate two-book deal agreed with Simon and Schuster for the United States of America.
Dr Bernhard Jackson, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing, has written several other mystery stories under a pen name, but says Missing – and the publishing deal – breaks new ground for her.
“This is the biggest deal in my life to date,” she says. “Any author would be thrilled to be published by Faber, and my excitement is only increased by knowing I’m going to be working with their crime editor Lochlann Binney.
“I intended (lead character) Martha Allen to be a real, complex woman faced with a complex puzzle, and I’m absolutely delighted that I’m going to get to share her with readers.”
Dr Bernhard Jackson said the inspiration for Missing originated with an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent that she felt could have made better narrative choices. She began writing the book in 2020, and after three years – including a writing sabbatical from her academic role – the story of Bristolian detective DI Martha Allen, and her case of a missing baby, was complete.
“I was living in Bristol at the time, and I love it as a city in its own right,” she says. “But Bristol also seems made for mystery fiction. It gives off a pleasing sense of griminess, and it has areas in which anything could happen — and often does.”
Faber described the book as “a smart, suspenseful crime thriller for fans of Cara Hunter and Susie Steiner” and has set a date of 12 March, 2026 for publication of the paperback.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr Bernhard Jackson has spent three decades in academia, with her writing published in the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review and Jewish Currents.
She joined the University in 2013, having been a supervisor at Cambridge, and before that spent six years at the University of Arkansas, where she became Assistant Professor of English. Among her research and teaching specialisms are Romanticism, Byron, Composition and Rhetoric.
