Hilary Bonner is an English crime novelist, best known for her psychological thrillers. Bonner, a former chairman of the Crime Writers Association, was brought up by the North Devon coast in the estuary town of Bideford, where her father was a local butcher and ran a tea shop. She was educated at the town's Edgehill College and went on to be accepted for the Daily Mirror Training Scheme as a 17-year-old school leaver.

She acquired her first job in Fleet Street aged 20, ultimately becoming show business editor of three national newspapers, The Sun, The Mail on Sunday, and The Daily Mirror, and assistant editor of one. She left Fleet Street in 1993 to become a full-time author.

Her published work now includes fifteen novels, and five nonfiction books.,

She lives in Somerset and London with her partner, the actress Amanda Barrie.