ABOUT simon kernick

Simon Kernick was born way back in 1966 in the less-than-quaint London satellite town of Slough, England. After leaving school in the mid 1980s with not much to yell about in the way of qualifications, he worked in a variety of jobs including labourer on a road-building gang (until an industrial accident involving his foot and a grit-carrying conveyer belt cut short a promising career); stockroom assistant for a major IT company (this is his cv talking); and fruitpicker (less said about that one the better).

He also spent several years living and travelling in Canada and the USA before returning to England via Australia and the Far East to complete his studies and postpone having to get a proper job.

He finally graduated in 1991 slap bang in the middle of a recession, and after a lengthy spell on the dole, interspersed with jobs as barman and Christmas tree uprooter (still his all-time favourite), he found work in London as a computer software salesman, and despite all his best efforts, remained one for the rest of the 1990s.

Finally, thinking there had to be more to life than all this, he rekindled his long-term interest in story writing and wrote two crime books, neither of which were met with much of a welcome, before finally embarking on The Business of Dying, the story of a police officer who moonlights as a hitman, which was completed early in 2001 and sold to Transworld, his current publishers, in September of that year. The book was released in July 2002 to much critical acclaim with The Guardian describing it as ‘a gem’, and The Independent hailing it as ‘the crime debut of the year’ (see all reviews). In the United States, The Business of Dying was shortlisted for the prestigious Barry Award for Best British Novel, and has since been translated into thirteen languages including Japanese, Greek and Russian. The Murder Exchange, a tale of intrigue and double-cross in the murky world of London gangland followed in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Barry Award, as well as the Theakstons Old Peculier crimewriting prize for best British Crime paperback (although by some terrible miscarriage of justice, it won neither!).

Since then, Simon has written a further four books. A Good Day to Die, his long-awaited sequel to The Business of Dying, which saw the hitman cop Dennis Milne returning to London to avenge the murder of his former colleague, was shortlisted for The CWA Steel Dagger for best thriller of 2005, and his latest paperback, the race against time thriller, Relentless, which The Observer described as ‘unputdownable’, was released in May 2007, and is one of only eight titles to be picked for Richard and Judy’s highly prestigious Recommended Summer Reads for 2007. The new hardback, Severed, a high-octane standalone thriller, hits the shelves on June 18th 2007.

Simon Kernick’s research involves him talking both on (but mainly off) the record with a number of contacts in various arms of the police service including Special Branch, the Anti-Terrorist Branch and The Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), and it’s their input that gives his books their authenticity. However, he’s been told to point out that, unlike some of his own police characters, these guys are all scrupulously honest, and none of them have ever killed people for money. Not that they’re admitting, anyway.
He lives in Oxfordshire and is currently hard at it on book number seven.