MIDSOMER MURDERS WRITERS

DOUGLAS WATKINSON


Douglas Watkinson at the Book Launch for 'Haggard Hawk'
March 2006
PHOTO - COPYRIGHT JOAN STREET

NEWS - JANUARY 2017

Douglas Watkinson's lastest novel in the successful 'Haggard Hawk' series, 'Jericho Road' has just been published.

'Small beginnings leading to grand finales, arrived at with plenty of humour, a chaotic family and a short fuse - that's always been Hawk's style. It's no different in Jericho Road ...

It starts with a stolen pocket watch that allegedly belonged to Heinrich Himmler. Hawk agrees to try and find it, but within days of poking his nose in the girl who stole it is murdered. The watch's current owner, a bad-tempered old man whose dangerous behaviour and verbal violence, make him a prime suspect, is charged with the crime...

Police are delighted to have such a straightforward result, but it seems far too easy to Hawk, too pat. He digs further, driven by a feeling that if he'd kept out of it the girl would still be alive.

And as he digs he uncovers a far nastier crime than mere murder&ldots;'


NEWS - SEPTEMBER 2015

Douglas Watkinson's lastest novel in the 'Haggard Hawk' series, 'Evil Turn' has just been published:

When two trawlermen are murdered, an old colleague asks Hawk to house the main witness before the trial. He knows there's a catch, but what the hell can it be?

Within days, he's caught up in a huge drugs deal, becomes a likely target for the IRA and has severe doubts about the murder charge itself.

That's when he realises why he's been roped in. If anyone can handle a terrorist threat, catch a murderer and recover 15 million poundsworth of heroin, all in his stride, it's Nathan Hawk...

 

FICTION - NATHAN HAWK SERIES

Each Nathan Hawk Mystery tells a very different story yet, thankfully, the man himself stays the same: he drinks too much whisky, loses his temper too often and worries incessantly about his children...

Haggard Hawk
Easy Prey
Scattered Remains
Evil Turn
Jericho Road

 

MIDSOMER MURDERS EPISODES

Faithful unto Death - Screenplay - adapted from the novel by Caroline Graham
Death in Disguise - Screenplay - adapted from the novel by Caroline Graham
Blood Will Out
Beyond the Grave
Dead in the Water
Down Among the Dead Men
Death & Dust

 

Douglas Watkinson began his writing career, soon after leaving East Fifteen Acting School, with a Thirty Minute Theatre for BBC2. In the same year he contributed several scripts to The Onedin Line and Z Cars for which he eventually became script editor and occasional producer.

He has written hundreds of television scripts since then, for such programmes as Emmerdale Farm, Z Cars, Spy Trap, Owen MD, Juliet Bravo, Howards Way, Anna Lee, Kavanagh Q.C. and The Bill. His favourites, however, remain Lovejoy, Maybury, Boon, Forever Green, Poirot and Midsomer Murders.

In the late eighties he wrote the first lunchtime drama to be shown in England - For Maddie With Love - which starred Ian Hendry and Nyree Dawn Porter and ran for two years.

In the early nineties he wrote two comedy series for the BBC, Sweet Sixteen and The New Statesman.

He has written several stage plays, one of which - The Dragon's Tail, starring Penelope Keith - played in the West End for a year.

He has also written for radio, a strange but rewarding project of fifty comedy sketches which formed the basis of "Teach Yourself Italian."

Douglas is also now writing a series of Detective Novels. His first book was called 'Haggard Hawk' and written under the pen name 'Marcus Barr', the rest have been written under his own name. 'Evil Turn', the fourth in the Nathan Hawk series has just been published. The novels are available from High Street booksellers and on-line outlets like Amazon.

 

MAY 2017

 

LINKS
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS WATKINSON
'HAGGARD HAWK' - HIS FIRST NOVEL
DOUGLAS WATKINSON'S WEB SITE

 

 

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