The Merchant's Mark

Pat McIntosh (born in Lanarkshire, Scotland) is a writer of historical mystery fiction and fantasy. Raised in Lanarkshire and, in her own words, inspired to become an author at an early age by Scottish writer Angus MacVicar, McIntosh was educated at the University of Glasgow, and lived and worked in Glasgow for many years before moving to the west coast of Scotland. Prior to fulfilling her wish to become an author, she worked, inter alia, as a librarian, a receptionist for an alternative therapy centre, a teacher of geology and palaeontology, and a tutor for the Open University. Her first success as a writer came with a string of fantasy short stories published in the series of The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories anthologies in the late 1970s, but she is best known as the author of the Gilbert and Alys Cunningham series of historical mysteries set in medieval Scotland, beginning with The Harper’s Quine in 2004.