Owen Laukkanen was born in Vancouver. After graduating from university in 2006, he answered an ad on Craigslist for a summer job at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas as a "poker tournament reporter" for a poker website. At the end of the summer, they offered him a full-time job. You wouldn't think you could make a living at this, but you would be wrong. For the next three years he traveled around the world, reporting from the most luxurious casinos of Monaco and Macau and Australia to the sketchiest card rooms of California and Atlantic City. In 2009, having seen his fill, Laukkanen quit to concentrate on fiction. He also spends summers as a deckhand on the boats of his father and his uncle, both commercial fishermen. He is at work on more novels.

His previous Stevens and Windermere novels are The Professionals, Criminal Enterprise, Kill Fee, and The Stolen Ones. The Professionals was nominated for the Barry Award and International Thriller Writers Award for best first novel, as well as the Spinetingler Award for Best Novel: New Voice. Criminal Enterprise was nominated for the ITW Award for best novel. Both books, as well as Kill Fee, appeared on several best-of-the-year lists.