Richard Shears has written 30 or so books encompassing fiction, true crime and general non-fiction. His recent non-fiction books include Bloodstain: the Vanishing of Peter Falconio and Wildlife Warrior: the Life of Steve Irwin. He has travelled the world as a journalist.

As a career journalist, Richard Shears has covered stories all over the world, from Yellowknife in Canada, to the African continent, the tiny island of Mog Mog in the Pacific and the Antarctic circle. There have been vast oceans and jungles in between. His assignments, one of which has resulted in being awarded a prestigious UK Press award for foreign reporting, have included wars all over the world, among them the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor. Photos he has taken have been used in magazines and exhibitions. The thirty or so books he has published encompass fiction, true crime and general nonfiction including Highway to Nowhere: The Chilling True Story of the Backpacker Murders (1996), Bloodstain: The Hunt for the Killer of Peter Falconio (2005), and Swamp: Who Murdered Margaret Clement? (2017) for New Holland Publishers.