Graham Bartlett
AUTHOR

Graham Bartlett

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense | Biographies & Memoirs
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I am a best-selling author and crime and police procedural advisor to fiction and TV writers. I was a police officer for thirty years and mainly policed the city of Brighton and Hove, rising to become a Chief Superintendent and its police commander. I started writing when I left the police in 2013 and, almost by accident, became a police procedural and crime advisor, helping scores of authors and TV writers (including Peter James, Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, Ruth Ware, Claire McGowan and Dorothy Koomson) achieve authenticity in their drama. I run online crime writing workshops and courses with the Professional Writing Academy and deliver inputs to Masters programmes at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia as well as at the Crime Writing Certificate programme at West Dean College. My Jo Howe crime series launched in 2022 with my debut novel, Bad for Good. Shortlisted for the Crimefest Debut of the Year award and winner of the Crime Fiction Lovers Editors' Choice award, it asks the question: How far would you go? "The murder of a promising footballer and, crucially, the son of the Brighton's Chief Superintendent, means Detective Superintendent Jo Howe has a complicated and sensitive case on her hands. The situation becomes yet more desperate following devastating blackmail threats. Howe can trust no one as she tracks the brutal killer in a city balanced on a knife edge of vigilante action and a police force riven with corruption." The second in the Jo Howe series, Force of Hate, was published in March 2023 'When a night-time firebomb attack at a Brighton travellers' site kills women and children, Chief Superintendent Jo Howe has strong reason to believe the new, dubiously elected, far-right council leader is behind the murders. Against the direct orders of her chief constable, Jo digs deep into the killings secretly briefing the senior investigating officer of her suspicions. As she delves further, Jo uncovers an underworld of human trafficking and euthanasia, all leading to a devastating plot which threatens thousands of lives and from which the murderous politician looks sure to walk scot-free. Having narrowly survived a plot to kill her, where another was not so lucky, she realises that only by facing near-certain death once more can she thwart this terrorist outrage.' The third, City on Fire, is out in March 2024 and is available for pre-order now: 'After losing her sister to a drug overdose, Chief Superintendent Jo Howe is desperate to tackle the world of drugs that consumes Brighton. Operation Eradicate is her response, deploying undercover tactics to collapse drug circles while also providing treatment services to addicts. But not everyone sees this as a positive development . The man behind Respite pharmaceuticals, billionaire Sir Ben Campbell, views Operation Eradicate as a threat to his business. His empire relies on huge numbers of users who survive on their substitute drugs. With connections in the highest levels of government, media and organised crime, Sir Ben unleashes a brutal counterattack on Jo. The question is, how will she survive this onslaught?' Aside from my new fiction career, I have two non fictions to my name, both co-written with 2015 Crime Writer’s Association Diamond Dagger Award winner, Peter James. The first, a Sunday Times bestseller, "Death Comes Knocking. Policing Roy Grace's Brighton," is an account of what it is like to police one of the UK’s most cosmopolitan cities, Brighton and Hove. With real stories, drawn from my 30 year career we link the events, incidents and investigations I describe into the fictional world created by Peter in his Roy Grace novels. The second, "Babes in the Wood," is described as a gripping police procedural with an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, in what became a thirty-two-year fight for justice. 'On 9 October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play on their Brighton estate. They would never return home; their bodies discovered the next day concealed in a local park. This devastating crime rocked the country. With unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, former senior detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing – a shock result sees Bishop walk free. Three years later, Graham is working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time, and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes?'
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