Joan Brady (4 December 1939 – 13 June 2024) was an American-British writer. She was the first woman and American to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her novel Theory of War.
Brady died from a heart attack brought on by sepsis, on 13 June 2024, at the age of 84.[4][5]
Works
Her first published book was The Impostor in 1979. In 1982, she published her autobiography, that appears under both the titles The Unmaking of a Dancer and Prologue: An Unconventional Life.
Her third book and second novel, Theory of War, was hailed as a "modern work of genius" and earned the Whitbread Novel of the Year award, as well as the Whitbread Book of the Year award.[6][7] This book also won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger and a US National Endowment for the Arts grant. Two novels followed, Death Comes for Peter Pan, an exposé of medical abuse in America, and The Emigre, the adventures of a conman.
Bleedout was her first thriller. She started writing crime fiction during a legal battle over fumes from a nearby shoemaker from which she won a large settlement.[8]Bleedout takes place against a backdrop of political and corporate corruption and follows two men, one a murderer, another his mentor in the process of being murdered as the action progresses. Its sequel Venom, published in 2010, introduces the theme of pharmaceutical ruthlessness in pursuit of a cure for radiation poisoning.
Bibliography
The Impostor (1979)
The Unmaking of a Dancer (1982) aka Prologue: An Unconventional Life (in UK)
