In her third year at the University of York, Steiner began writing for the university's student paper, Nouse, “to make it look like she always wanted to do journalism.' However, Steiner later noted that she never had the 'hunger'' or the 'motivation' to succeed in journalism, unlike her counterparts. In 2019, she was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma, and she died three years later on 2 July 2022. Six months after her first novel, Homecoming, sold in a publishing auction, Steiner became legally blind as a result of retinitis pigmentosa. Steiner married Tom Happold and together they had two sons, George and Ben. In 1992, Steiner received a degree in English Literature from the University of York, after which she moved back to London. Her early literary interests included Charlotte's Web, Stig of the Dump, and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit as a teenager, she read 'all the Brontes, all of Austen, most of George Eliot, all of Thomas Hardy.'

She developed interest in writing at a young age. She was raised in North London and was educated at Henrietta Barnett School, a grammar school primarily for girls with academy status in the Hampstead Garden Suburb. Steiner is the daughter of psychoanalysts John and Deborah Steiner. This was followed by Persons Unknown, published in 2017, and Remain Silent, published in 2020. The first novel in the series was Missing, Presumed and was published in 2016. Susan Elizabeth Steiner (29 June 1971 – 2 July 2022 ) was an English novelist and journalist best known for her three crime thriller novels set in Cambridgeshire, and whose central character is DS Manon Bradshaw.

Missing presumed a novel susie steiner