“For me, crime writing offers the opportunity to create compelling narratives that draw the audience in whilst engaging them with wider ideas beyond just the consideration of ‘cops and robbers’ or even ‘right and wrong’. The crime genre provides the possibility to consider many of the issues I feel strongly about, issues that arise from my own inner city roots and personal experience.”

Born in Birmingham, a ‘child of the sixties’, part of that generation of working class kids first encouraged to see continuing in education as a real option.

Busked my way through university, followed by a succession of bands before dreams of ‘making it’ were bludgeoned to death by Punk.

Teaching for forty years in deprived areas of a major city, the experience at times providing a close-up of lives blighted by crime and social ills. More importantly, it more often offered insight into the lives of so many others who daily overcome circumstances that would defeat and overwhelm most of us.

Now living in rural North Yorkshire and writing full time – having taught everyone from convicted murderers and psychopaths through to premier league footballers and Hollywood stars – my interests focus on untold stories and unheard voices.

Set in the social and political turmoil of the 1984 miner’s strike, All the Dead Men Lie aims to be a fast-paced crime novel with a social conscience. The novel attempts to reveal a time and events that tore apart the social fabric of Britain, and whose ills resonate down to us today.