Which is part of the whole industry, of course, but then when I was doing the Space Team books, I was just writing it for myself. The first book, The Killing Season, was published by Orion in 2014, followed by The Samaritan, The Time to Kill (titled Winterlong in the USA), and Don’t Look For Me.

I just love that kind of thing happening regardless of any knock-on effect, but people then become more than readers of the book, they become invested in the community as well, so that when a new book comes out they’re straight on it and chatting about it. So I was quite tempted to see if I could redeem him a bit in the eyes of the people who hate him, if I could still stay true to his character but turn him into a three-dimensional character that people identified with.Hoon is looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home sniping at his big sister Berta who has moved in with him after the events of Westward. When I wrote a second one then the sales of the first book skyrocketed, and by the time I wrote the third one I was earning more in one day on these three books than I was in six months on all my traditionally published books combined. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. If there is one line that had me spilling my whisky it was the description of the skinny jeans, possibly my biggest (of many) chuckles.

Better known as Barry Hutchison, BooksfromScotland caught up with him to talk about his latest novel and about his career as an author. Lesson learned … “reviews are good, but take time before falling for something based on the reviews”. The whole series ran out of steam in book 3 and this book, the fourth in the series is weak both in content and plot. A larger than life bully with a penchant for bad language, Hoon was a deliberately over the top caricature—a barely human monster who existed largely to make the lives of the other characters that bit more difficult. More foul mouthed fun with disgraced former police officer and general mad bastard at large Bob Hoon.They were quite mixed, it was half going, ‘I absolutely hate this character and skip over all his scenes’, and the other half going, ‘I love him, he’s the greatest character I’ve ever read’. We set up a limited company, contacted foreign rights sales agents, TV rights agents, we’ve now got a PR company involved. This is a bit of a Christmas crossover special, so if you are a fan of the DCI Logan series then some of your faves will make an appearance here too. I tried to push the idea from my mind, but Hoon—because this is what he does—soon forced his way back in. Reading through the lines was stressful because the narrative lacked mystery and was more like an action movie script.