Simon has always been fascinated by crime novels and grew up reading the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.
To this day, he continues to be mesmerised by their most famous detectives: Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe and Hercule Poirot. These are the characters who inspired Simon to write his first crime novel, Running Girl, introducing Garvie Smith, a young man with a brilliant brain and an obvious reluctance to use it responsibly. Maths was a subject Simon struggled with at school – so he made Garvie a maths genius.
He also asked himself: what makes a really good crime novel, what keeps readers hooked until the very end? And he answered: 1) a totally gripping story full of mystery, danger and foul deeds, 2) a charismatic detective, and 3) a vivid sense of place. This is what he always aims for in his own writing.
Simon lives in Oxford, the city of another very famous detective, Inspector Morse, and he is currently writing another Garvie Smith Mystery.
