Rod Cookson is a writer who lives in Oxford with his wife. By day, he works in London as Publishing Director of the Royal Society. His writing has won the Opening Lines Competition, been runner-up in the Page 100 Competition and been shortlisted for numerous other prizes.

Ill Met by Murder was written as Rod recovered from surgery on a stomach tumour. Combining the three voice structure of No Country for Old Men with the playful tone of Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop, he began writing … and so DCI Lovegrove, DS McGrath and the murderous Torsten Wolfskopf came into our world.