Months after completing his A Levels in 1978, Tony was pounding the beat in Hartlepool dreaming of being a detective. Almost thirty years later he found himself in front of the worldwide media leading the investigation into John ‘Canoe Man’ Darwin, his last case before retirement. Tony had risen from bobby on the beat to Head of Cleveland Police’s Murder Team, bringing over 50 killers to justice. He hunted serial rapists, child abductors and paedophiles. As a Detective Superintendent, Tony set up the country’s first dedicated helpline for victims of Honour Based Violence and Forced Marriage.
In his younger days he worked in intelligence units and operated in the murky world of informants. He twice studied with the founding members of the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit (think ‘Silence of the Lambs’) and undertook a course on Forensic Linguistics at Leiden University
which was taught by Jim Fitzgerald, the FBI Special Agent portrayed in Netflix’s ‘Manhunt: Unabomber’ drama series.
Post retirement Tony delivered training across the UK and Ireland and led a team of retired detectives teaching homicide investigation in Bahrain.
An avid reader since childhood Tony took up writing to keep his mind active and his body out of the pub. His Dark Tides Thriller series follows Detective Chief Inspector Sam Parker and her wizened (and often politically incorrect) older Detective Sergeant, Ed Whelan.
Having attended over 100 post mortems and countless violent crime scenes, Tony takes the reader into the world he used to inhabit and puts them bang inside the heads of the detectives and the bad guys.
His novels have been described as ‘hard hitting and 100% authentic.’
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