Colin Mardell

Colin was born in Ruislip, Middlesex, attended the London Nautical School. After a short time as a factory worker, at the age of eighteen, he joined the London Fire Brigade and served for thirty years, primarily in Northwest London. Rising to the rank of Divisional Officer he eventually led the Brigade’s Fire Investigation Teams. He met and married his wife Christine at the age of twenty-three, and they have two children. Forced to retire through ill health at fifty, he worked for a time as an information officer for Buckinghamshire Social Services Department, before moving to Lincolnshire in 2001.

A long serving member of Hillingdon based amateur dramatic society Argosy Players, Colin’s other leisure activity was fiction writing, initially purely for pleasure. It was only during the prolonged inactivity caused by Covid that he focused on his writing and considered publishing his work.

His first effort was a short autobiographical piece about something that happened during his fire service career. Encouraged by the response, he returned to his first love, international spy and crime fiction, and his first novel ‘Keep Her Safe’ was published in 2022. The lead character, Drew Parker proved to be popular among his readership, and has since appeared in a further four of his published. A further series featuring Saffron Price, a different lead character, has also been released, alongside a standalone adventure crime novel.

To date Colin has published eight novels and his book ‘Wolf in the Henhouse’ was winner of the 2025 Noose Award for best Crime Thriller.