Timothy Hallinan (born 1949) is an American thriller writer, based in Southern California and Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, Hallinan created the erudite private eye Simeon Grist, who appeared in a total of six novels, all set in Los Angeles. The series was widely and well reviewed, with some titles appearing on critics' "Ten Best" lists for the year in which they appeared, such as that of the Drood Review of Mystery, but did not achieve widespread popularity. (Hallinan came out with a seventh Grist novel in 2017.) Hallinan returned to publication in 2007 with a second series, set in Bangkok, where he has lived off and on since the early 1980s. The first book in the series is A Nail Through the Heart (2007). The fourth, The Queen of Patpong (2010), was nominated for both the Edgar and the Macavity awards. The sixth, For the Dead (2014), was chosen by The New York Times Book Review to represent Thailand in its “Thrillers from Around the World” feature. In 2011 he launched a third series starring Junior Bender, a burglar who serves as a private detective to Los Angeles' underworld elite. The fourth book, Herbie's Game, won the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery Novel in 2015. In his non-writing career, Hallinan served as a consultant to corporations, advising on issues of television sponsorship and audience-building. He also created a firm, Hallinan Consulting, that created educators' websites on behalf of a number of public television programs, including The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Slavery in America, and The Supreme Court. He now writes full-time.