Retired detective turned author Jonathan Harvey, from Burgess Hill, has not left the world of crime and justice completely behind him. He talks to Hannah Collisson about his debut novel, three decades in the police, and the challenges of the writing process.

 

My new book, His Life Was A Lie is a crime thriller. The central character is Sir Roger Knight, outwardly a model of respectability, but beneath this he has links to the murky world of the dying days of the Third Reich... It is based mainly in the Brighton and South Downs areas, and finishes in the mountains of Malaga, with the forces of law and order pitted against blackmailers.

I served in Sussex Police for 30 years of which about 25 were as a detective in various departments and postings... The first ten years were in Brighton where I began ‘on the beat’ then became a detective, and promotion took me to the north of Sussex.

The police force really does teach you about writing, and I can trace my enjoyment of writing back to my early days in the police... Very quickly I learned how to talk to people to question them on their experiences and then to put their words into a statement, as well as attention to detail and how to build a story.

A lot of trial and error and perseverance was involved during the writing process...The delete button was getting worn out! The story developed as I wrote it; I knew that I wanted it to be about a successful man being blackmailed.

The story twists and turns… It definitely flirts between fact and fiction, between what we think and what we know and, what we want to believe and what we don’t want to believe, but is or could be true. I have been really pleased with the response to the book, even from people outside of Sussex... One couple has said they intend to visit the area to track down the actual locations I have mentioned, to literally follow the action. I thought they were joking but apparently there are people who do visit locations and follow the events detailed in books which in fact I think is brilliant.

My second book is finished in manuscript form... and is again set mainly in Brighton and Hove; again it is a crime thriller but completely separate from the first story, no characters and very few locations are the same.

n His Life Was A Lie by Jonathan S Harvey (Book Guild Limited) is available from Amazon now.