Bright Lights, Big City…

I’m writing this on a British Airways flight from Tenerife to London on my way back from our family holiday. It’s been a lovely break – I disengaged from work and did no writing – but, as July pushes on, it’s time to get back to my desk.   I’ve wanted to send Milton to […]


What Can You Expect From Me in 2019?

It’s going to be a busy year this year – and a lot of fun if you like my books.   So what do I have coming for you?   I’m just putting the finishing touches to the first book in a new detective series. The protagonist – Holden Priest – draws upon all the […]


Watch me on TV…

In case you missed it, I was recently interviewed on national television in the United Kingdom prior to the launch of the new John Milton novel, Sleepers.   I live and work in Salisbury, a beautiful mediaeval town that has recently found itself in the news after the attempted assassination of a Russian defector and […]


Milton is back – Sleepers is available for pre-order

I started planning the next Milton book as I was putting the finishing touches to the last one, Redeemer. I’d been planning to write something based around the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Russian spy who was allegedly poisoned by the SVR in 2006. You might remember that case: his tea was laced with radioactive […]


Making It Difficult For Myself

One of the things that’s particularly important to me when I’m writing is that my books are as authentic as I can make them. That has led to me getting into some scrapes now and again, and it’s also meant that I have possibly limited my market a little bit. Let me give you a […]


The accidental hero – is John Milton arrogant and incompetent?

One of the most common criticisms of The Cleaner that I see in reviews is that Milton is, basically, incompetent.   The suggestion is that an operative with his particular set of skills (hat tip to Liam Neeson) would not make the elementary errors that Milton makes. His tradecraft is sometimes lacking and he leaves […]


McCall, Bond and The Wire: my inspirations for Milton and The Cleaner

One of the questions that I get asked most often, and one that has already been asked in the Facebook group that I set up for the purposes of this book club, is where I got my inspiration for character of John Milton. The truth is that Milton came to me fairly easily. There are […]


The John Milton Book Club: The Cleaner

If you had told me four years ago that the release of The Cleaner would mark the start of my dream career as a novelist I would probably have said that you were crazy, drunk, high or a combination of all three. I was still working in the film industry then, my daughter was coming […]