About Me
I am British but was born in Ghana and spent most of my childhood in Kenya, Uganda, India, Sierra Leone and Cyprus. I am the second of four siblings. We had little TV and no iPads growing up so to amuse ourselves on long car journeys from places like Nairobi to Mombasa or Calcutta to Puri we read avidly and made up our own stories. The first I can remember are the ones my mother told me. I was schooled abroad until I was about eight and then went to boarding school in the UK. I was educated at Kings School Canterbury and the universities of Leicester and Durham.
I have always loved telling stories but never thought it was a viable way to make a living so after university I went into brand marketing and advertising. I now realise that I was still telling stories because well conceived brands like Bacardi occupy the same psychological space in our minds as well conceived fictional characters like James Bond. Both are figments of our imagination.
After ten years in marketing, I had an idea for a book that wouldn’t go away. My wife Jenny, who was also in marketing, encouraged me to give up my career and write – so long as I finished the novel in one year. It took me two. After the allotted twelve months, I told Jenny that I had written all the necessary words – just not in the right order. Thankfully, she encouraged me to carry on and finish it.
The novel, The Miracle Strain/Messiah Code, was published in over twenty-five languages and reached the top five in the Sunday Times Bestseller List. Disney bought the film rights for $1.6 million. Another five novels followed: Crime Zero/The Crime Code, The Lucifer Code, The Venus Conspiracy, The Source and The Colour Of Death. All were published in the UK by Bantam Press and Corgi, and translated into several languages. Warner Bros optioned the film rights to The Source and the producers of Lord of The Rings and The Golden Compass optioned The Crime Code. Although we have got tantalizingly close on several occasions, not one of the books has been made into a film. Yet.
In 2012, just after my last novel was published, my father died. For a while, for reasons I don’t understand, my stories left with him. Over a decade later, I began my seventh novel. I wrote Manhattan Down during the pandemic and it is dedicated to my mother who told me my first stories and died on October 6th 2024 at the ripe old age of 90. Manhattan Down is published in hardback on May 8th 2025.
I have been married to my wife Jenny for over thirty years and we have a twenty-year-old daughter Phoebe at university. We live in Twickenham with our dog Millie (who is technically Phoebe’s but we end up walking and feeding her), and our cat Coco (who belongs to no one).