Monabi Mitra is a writer and a Professor of English Literature who teaches at Scottish Church College, Kolkata. The daughter of an Indian Railway officer, she spent her childhood in picturesque railway colonies before moving to Calcutta for her education. She studied at Loreto House, Presidency College and Jadavpur University. Married to an officer of the Indian Police Service, she accompanied her husband to different corners of Bengal where she came across widely divergent shades of life and society. These, along with her experiences of railway life, inspired her to start writing. She began by publishing translations of two contemporary Bengali authors—Ashapurna Debi (The Matchbox: Selected Short Stories of Ashapurna Debi, Rupa & Co., 2004) and Sunil Gangopadhay (The Fakir, Harper Perennial, 2010). Her acquaintance with the world of the police and her varied insights and interactions with different strata of policemen helped her rediscover crime literature. In 2009 she began writing a crime novel, specifically a police procedural. The novel was published by Penguin India in 2012 as F.I.R and introduced DSP Bikram Chatterjee and his dedicated team of Crime Branch officers including Inspector Ghosh, Sheena Sen and DIG Toofan Kumar. This was followed by the second book in the series, The Dead Don't Confess (Penguin Random House, 2013) while The Final Report (Penguin Random House, 2014) was the last in the series and visualised the evolution of a police officer's attitude to his work. In 2019 she published Under the Banyan Tree: The Forgotten Story of Barrackpore Park that chronicles the story of Barrackpore Park—once the Viceroy's weekend retreat which fell into disuse after 1947 and soon became a derelict ruin. Efforts were made to restore the mansion and parkland as a valuable reminder of India's past. Her book uses archival material and chronicles the history of the house and park as also a photo essay containing vignettes of the restoration project.