The Broken Afternoon

Move over Morse. Simon Mason Oxford crime novel breathes fresh life into the police procedural' Val McDermid
'There is no one else like him' Mark Sanderson The Times/Sunday Times Crime Club

A DI RYAN WILKINS MYSTERY

A SHOCKING DISAPPEARANCE

A four-year-old girl goes missing in plain sight outside her nursery in Oxford, a middle-class, affluent area,
her mother only a stones-throw away.

A TRIGGERING RESPONSE

Ryan Wilkins, one of the youngest ever Detective Inspectors in the Thames Valley force, dishonourably discharged three months ago, watches his former partner DI Ray Wilkins deliver a press conference, confirming a lead.

A DARK WEB

Ray begins to delve deeper, unearthing an underground network of criminal forces in the local area. But while Ray's investigation stalls Ryan brings his unique talents to unofficial and quite illegal inquiries which will bring him into a confrontation with the very officials who have thrown him out of the force.


Praise for the DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries

'Mason has reformulated Inspector Morse for the 2020s' The Times
'Start now and avoid the rush' Guardian

Simon Mason has pursued parallel careers as a publisher and an author, whose YA crime novels Running Girl, Kid Got Shot and Hey, Sherlock! feature the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith.  A former Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, he has also taught at Oxford Brookes University and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
 
At first he wrote books for adults, then books for children, which grew up at roughly the same rate his own children grew up, and now he is back writing books for adults again.  He has written a work of non-fiction, The Rough Guide to Classic Novels.  His novels have been shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Branford Boase Prize for Best First Children's Novel, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Costa Prize for Best Children's Book, and have won the Betty Trask for Best First Novel and the Crimefest Prize for Best YA Crime Novel.