Cooper's Moon is Richard Conrath's first novel and part of a trilogy featuring Cooper, a private detective, who looks for his kidnapped son while trying to track down missing people. He is a former Catholic priest who left to teach philosophy in a small college while freelancing for papers like the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Sunday Magazine. He left teaching in 1984 and began begin a series of three-year stints in administration as a college vice-president, president, and then as headmaster of an American school in Turkey. It was in Turkey, during the darkness of the winters there, that he began to write his first mystery.

Today he lives with his wife in a small town in south Florida and enjoys the peace that comes with the sun, the sand, and the slower pace set by Island Time.