Chris Whitaker's Books

Biography

Born and raised in North London, Chris Whitaker flunked his A-levels. He revised obsessively, but the night before his economics exam, he went out on a bender and got so drunk he woke up in hospital. So, going to university wasn’t on the cards. Instead, he worked a string of low-paid jobs menial jobs.

A Near-Death Experience

Whilst delivering leaflets, a thug approached him and demanded that he hand over his phone. They got into a fight, and Whitaker was stabbed with a kitchen knife several times. After the attack, he suffered from shock and couldn’t sleep, eat or concentrate. To help him cope with the stress, Whitaker started taking drugs and drinking. He also had suicidal thoughts. Somebody suggested journaling to him, and he discovered that writing about his experience helped him get back on an even keel.

A Job in the City

A couple of years later, Whitaker had put the whole episode behind him and decided he should get a proper job. He paid for the requisite exams on his credit card and then managed to land himself a position in the City of London, working his way up from an entry-level job to a trading desk.

But this didn’t go well.

“I lost a million pounds… I’d broken my trading limits, then channelled my inner Nick Leeson and hidden the loss. I was young, stupid and largely unaware of just how serious the situation was. Inevitably, I got caught” (The Guardian)

Whilst he wasn’t sacked or reported to the police, the firm demanded that he work to pay back half of his losses. In his mid-twenties, he owed his employer half a million pounds. Again, his thoughts turned to suicide, and once again, he turned to writing to help him deal with the trauma.

Becoming an Author

The third pivotal point in Whitaker’s journey was an interview he read with John Hart, the author of The Last Child. Hart described how he had given up a successful career as a lawyer to become a writer. Whitaker followed suit. He moved to Spain (with his then-pregnant wife) and wrote his first novel.

Giving up a well-paid job whilst my wife was pregnant to embark on a different career strikes me as rash. However, after being stabbed and losing a million on the stock exchange, I suppose Whitaker’s definition of risky differs from mine.

Fortunately for him and his fans, he succeeded in his third venture. His first novel Tall Oaks was published in 2016 and won the John Creasey — New Blood — Dagger for the best book by a first-time author.

His third novel, We Begin at the End, won a Gold Dagger, Theakston Crime Novel of the Year and the Ned Kelly International Award. It has been translated into 27 languages, and Disney has bought the rights to serialise it.

Writing Style

Chris Whitaker’s books are character-driven. He takes emotionally fuelled situations and then plays them out through the eyes of his protagonists. These aren’t high-octane thrillers, more a gradual unfolding of a series of twists and turns.

“The crime, the act itself, it’s usually brief, but the repercussions can last a lifetime. I’m interested in how these acts change our lives.” (Shots Crime and Thriller Ezine)

Whitaker sets his stories in the United States, a country of which, like Steve Cavanagh, he has little experience.

“The U.S. is a great setting for crime fiction. Guns, small-town sheriffs, the F.B.I. There’s something inherently fascinating about it.” (Shots Crime and Thriller Ezine)

It isn’t easy to write about a place you don’t know, and Whitaker took inspiration from the T.V. and researched using the internet, books and maps. He also used the resources in his local library, where he has a part-time job. Being a Gold Dagger winner is not as lucrative as working as a city trader, though less risky.

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