Born and raised in Detroit, Steve Hamilton graduated from the University of Michigan where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction. His first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Mystery by an Unpublished Writer. Once published, it won the 1999 Edgar and Shamus Awards for Best First Novel, and was short-listed for the Anthony and Barry Awards. Hamilton currently works for IBM in upstate New York where he lives with his wife Julia and their two children.

Steve Hamilton is the only author to ever win the Shamus and Edgar Awards for his first novel (Patricia Cornwell, Michael Connelly, Stuart Woods and James Patterson all started their careers with the coveted "Best First" Edgar prize), his second Alex McKnight novel, Winter of the Wolf Moon was named one of the year's Notable Books by the New York Times Book Review and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly as did his third and fourth novels, The Hunting Wind and North of Nowhere.