Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer. He wrote three Mortdecai novels (of which this is the third), a historical novel involving an ancestor of Mortdecai, and left a fifth novel unfinished at his death in 1985. Since he died, the Mortdecai novels have achieved cult status.