Peter James's Books | Crime Books

Biography

Peter James was born in Brighton in 1948 with a silver spoon thrust in his mouth. His mother, Cornelia James, was a successful businesswoman and designer who became Queen Elizabeth II’s glove maker. As a boy, he attended the public school Charterhouse, holidayed in the South of France in the summer and skied in the winter. In his teens, he was asked if he wanted to train with the British Olympic Ski Team, though his mother forbade it, insisting he focused on his O levels instead.

Script Writing

After school, he went to Ravensbourne Film School and moved to Canada. Like his namesake Peter May, he started writing for TV, receiving his first writing credit for a Canadian children’s TV programme.

“I started my career writing back in 1970 when I first arrived in Toronto and worked for Channel 19 TV as a gofer on the kid’s daily show Polka Dot Door. One day the scriptwriter was ill, and the producer asked me to write the show – I ended up writing it for nearly a year.” (Dorset Book Detective)

He moved into film screenwriting and production, with credits on 26 movies. His career received mixed reviews. The film critic Barry Norman called his 1975 comedy Spanish Fly “the least funny British funny film ever made”, and Time Out described it as a “dire comedy which doubles as a series of plugs for an underwear company”. Thirty years later, he had perfected his art. In 2005 he was the executive producer of The Merchant of Venice, which was nominated for a BAFTA.

Whilst screenwriting by day, he wrote novels by night, a habit that has stuck with him.

“My writing day starts at 6 p.m. when I mix a large vodka martini with four olives, put on some music, light up a cigar and get into a zone. I try to ensure that whatever I’m doing, I leave myself time to write 1,000 words six days a week.” (Maggie James Fiction)

Novelist

In 1981 he published his first novel, the spy thriller Dead Letter Drop, and then churned out a slew of supernatural and espionage thrillers. In 1993 the hardback copy of his eleventh novel Host was sold with two floppy disks and billed as “the world’s first electronic novel”. The Science Museum holds a copy in its archives.

“I got absolutely pilloried; I was on Today accused of killing the novel… one journalist even took his computer on a wheelbarrow to the beach, along with a generator, to read Host in his deckchair.” (Publishing Perspectives)

Detective Inspector Roy Grace

James’s writing career took off after his house was burgled. The detective who came to investigate the crime saw his pile of novels and offered to help if he should ever decide to write crime fiction. At about the same time, James’s publisher asked him if he would like to write a Police Procedural. The real Detective David Gaylor became James’s confidant, and the fictional Brighton Detective Inspector Roy Grace was born.

Since 2005 the Roy Grace series has expanded to 16 novels, sold 21 million copies and been translated into 37 languages. It has had 19 consecutive UK Sunday Times number-one best-sellers, became a New York Times best-seller and topped the sales charts in Canada, France, Germany and Russia. Peter James no longer has a silver spoon in his mouth but a platinum one.

James puts himself in good company when challenged that, as far as writers go, he has become a one-character wonder.

“The most important thing in writing – and the hardest to create – are great, engaging characters. And if you make them real enough, you can move them forward in their lives – I love doing this with Roy Grace! Secondly, many writers have pretty much made a career out of a single character – Ian Rankin with Rebus, Lee Child with Reacher, Conan Doyle too.” (The Bagley Brief)

The Art of Research

James invests a lot of time researching his stories, visiting prisons, and spending time with police forces in the UK and US. The inspiration for his 13th Roy Grace book Need you Dead, which tackles domestic violence, came from his time with the Los Angeles Police Force.

“I was with the police, and I was played a tape of a woman … She dialled 911 to say her estranged husband was trying to break into the house, and she was absolutely terrified. He got into the house, and then the woman was screaming, ‘He’s trying to get into the bedroom’, and then we heard this bang-bang-bang-bang, and it was quiet, and she’d been shot dead. It just left me chilled.” (The Orange County Register)

He prides himself on the technical authenticity of his writing, ratifying the details with his contacts within Sussex Police. After David Gaylor retired, another policeman, Commander Graham Bartlet, continued to help him. They went on to collaborate on a true crime book, Death Comes Knocking – Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton.

Style

James admits that he writes the books he would like to buy:

“I write the way I like to read – which is short chapters, with cliffhanger endings.” (Dorset Book Detective)

His preference is evident in his writing, characters and storylines. Peter James’s books are populated with sinister villains, heroic police officers and loveable rogues, and the plots are full of betrayal, revenge, lust and jealousy. In the end, the villains receive what they deserve, and so do the heroes, and so do the rogues.

That is what you get; technically accurate, easy-to-read page-turners with plenty of plot twists, drama and cliffhangers. Like Martina Cole, Peter James writes the soap operas of the crime fiction world. Also, like Martina Cole, he doesn’t win awards for literary greatness, but he has been named WH Smith’s “Greatest Crime Writer Of All Time” and received the CWA “Diamond Dagger” for sustained excellence.

The readers love Peter James’s books, and so do the booksellers.