Ajay Chowdhury

Ajay Chowdhury was the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker–Bloody Scotland crime fiction award. He is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director who was born in India and now lives in London where he builds digital businesses, cooks experimental dishes for his wife and daughters and writes through the night. His children’s book, Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical.

The Waiter, published in 2021 by Harvill Secker, is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures. Follow-up The Cook was a Sunday Times and Guardian Crime Book of 2022 and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective – is about government surveillance and AI and was a Sunday Times Crime Book of the month. The Spy is the fourth book in the Detective Kamil Rahman series and is full of his signature twists, wit and topical themes.