Jill Staynes writes her own novels as well as writing under the name of Elizabeth Eyre and Susannah Stacy with Margaret Storey. They were pupils at the same school where they invented bizarre characters and exchanged serial episodes about them. Their first book together. at the age of fifteen, was called 'Bungho, or why we went to Aleppo'. It was not offered for publication. They have both written stories for children, and together created the highly praised Superintendent Bone modern detective novels as well as this series of Italian Renaissance whodunnits.