He was educated at Oxford University and Nottingham University, he is a former Director of the Brighton Literature Festival and remains a regular chairperson at major UK book festivals.A freelance journalist for twenty years, specialising in literature and film, he has interviewed numerous writers from around the world and many high profile actors and film directors.He has also written about astanga vinyasa yoga. He has been the Observer newspaper’s crime fiction critic since 1999.

He is best known for an award-winning series of satirical crime novels featuring a yoga-obsessed journalist, Nick Madrid, and his tough-as-nails sidekick, Bridget Frost.His current work is the non-comic Brighton crime trilogy. The City of Dreadful Night will be published in August 2010; The Last King of Brighton in February 2011; and "God's Lonely Man" in August 2011.

Novels

• (reprint Speck Press, 2004, ISBN 9780972577649)
• A Ghost of A Chance (1998)
• Two To Tango (1998)
• The Once and Future Con (1999)
• Foiled Again (2001)
• Cast Adrift (2004)
• City of Dreadful Night (2010)

Short Stories

• Don’t Think of Tigers [Editor] (2001)
• "The Great Detective"; (The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime, 2002)
• "The Postman Only Rings When He Can Be Bothered" (The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime, 2002; Crime Scenes, 2008)
• "The Library Sign" (The Illustrated Brighton Moment, 2008)
• "The Man With The Pram" (Criminal Tendencies, 2009)

Non-Fiction

• The Great Train Robbery (2008)