Featured Interview With Douglas Watkinson
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’ve written literally hundreds of television screenplays – everything from Z Cars to Midsomer Murders, via Poirot, Lovejoy and many more. Writing novels has been a new venture for me and there are now six Nathan Hawk Murder Mysteries including the brand new story WHITE CRANE, available on Amazon.
Hawk himself is a bit like me in that we both have four grown up kids, scattered all over the globe. Like him, I live in a thatched cottage in the countryside just outside London and work from a log cabin, usually with two German Shepherds for company. I’m told I have green fingers! I have a mini forest of bonsai trees and and a large collection of orchids.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write. You could say it’s a hobby that turned into a profession. I had my first play produced on television just after I left drama school. It went on from there.
Treasure Island (R.L.Stevenson) was the first book I remember reading cover to cover … and then reading again because it so fired my imagination. From there, still very young, I read every single Sherlock Holmes short story again and again.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favourite all-time author is Thomas Hardy. He has that gift for making you believe every word that he writes and every event that occurs. In my own field of crime writing my all time favourite is Michael Dibdin and I just wish the Aurelio Zen series had taken off. After Michael, I’ll read anything by Stephen King, Kate Atkinson and Karin Slaughter.
If I had to choose one book to take on that desert island with me it would be Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie. It’s a book that says so much about a time and a place which my own family was part of. On top of that it’s one of the most evocative titles I know. Three words which you can always bring to mind.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
This is how Hawk himself introduces readers to WHITE CRANE, the latest in the Nathan Hawk Murder Mysteries
Dear Reader,
I didn’t fancy getting caught up in the search for Suyin Qu, a young Chinese overstayer and a friend of my son Jaikie. I justified it by saying that if Suyin wanted to go missing, that was her prerogative. In truth, her disappearance didn’t involve any blood and guts, so why would I be interested?
Then two men broke into Jaikie’s house looking for Suyin and made the mistake of giving him a black eye, a gash down the inside of his cheek and a bruised face and ego. Nothing valuable was stolen, the place wasn’t trashed and the only thing taken was a 150-year-old bonsai tree, which had been standing on the kitchen drainer.
The tree bugged me, but the crime was hardly one of the big three: murder, rape, kidnapping. It was small-scale breaking and entering, burglary and ABH, and the police were only passingly interested.
That all changed, however, when I stumbled across a body, that of someone else who wanted to find her. The murder was brutal and the only person the police suspected was Suyin Qu. And she had disappeared into thin air…
Hawk
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles
Douglas Watkinson’s Website