Joan Lock

Joan Lock’s first book, Lady Policeman, described her six years as a policewoman in London’s West End during the 1950s. The next, Reluctant Nightingale, her previous training as a nurse. Nine non-fiction, police/crime books followed including three on Scotland Yard’s First Detectives and a history (the first) of the British Women Police – a subject on which she is an authority. She supported women police during their difficult integration period of the 1970s-90s with features in the police press and on radio and advised on and appeared in BBC4’s 90-minute TV documentary, A Fair Cop, in 2015.

Joan has also written short stories, radio plays and documentaries. Her crime fiction includes one modern novel, Death in Perspective, and, beginning with Dead Image, seven Victorian novels featuring the charismatic Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Earnest Best. Another major non-fiction work, The Princess Alice Disaster, was published in 2013

She has served twice on the CWA Committee, is past Chair of their Non-Fiction Awards Panel and for ten years contributed Locklines, a page on police matters, to their journal, Red Herrings,for which she received two awards.