Joan Lingard was born in Edinburgh in 11932 and was raised in Belfast, the setting of several of her novels, including The File on Fraulein Berg. Lingard herself attended school in Belfast, as do the characters in the novel, and she too dealt with the pressures and concerns of living in Northern Ireland during World War II. From childhood, Lingard aspired to be a writer, and she began writing at age eleven. She lived in Belfast until the age of eighteen, then enjoyed a career as both a schoolteacher and a writer.

Lingard has written more than thirty books, most of them for young adults, and she succeeds in creating realistic young characters and conveying the mixture of excitement and tension that characterizes adolescent life. Most of Lingard's writings revolve around experiences she had growing up in Northern Ireland during wartime turmoil, and with the...