Charlotte’s War is my fourth novel. The first two were self-published with Matador and a third, The Fuhrer’s Orphans, won the 2019 Yeovil Literary Prize and was published last October by the e-book start-up Bloodhound Books. This features young children fleeing the Nazi regime. It’s been translated into six languages and an audio book is coming out just about now from Dreamscape.
My background is in newspaper journalism and before writing novels I took a University of East Anglia masterclass, spending a year mentoring with crime writer Jim Kelly. I also have a Facebook Thriller Writer web page and my own web site (davidlaws.co.uk)
The first novel, Munich The Man Who Said No! tells of a woman’s search for her missing grandfather and the second, Exit Day has an assassin stalking Britain’s Prime Minister during the Bexit crisis.
I love adventures and mysteries and avidly follow the work of authors like Robert Harris, Robert Goddard, Philip Kerr and Ken Follett, although strong female voices, as in Lethal White (Robert Galbraith) and Val McDermid’s Kick Back, are of great interest. I invest heavily in research for story background – such as flights in an open cockpit Tiger Moth - and base my characters close to my Suffolk home near Bury St Edmunds.
As a journalist I conducted interviews with celebrities such as Jack Higgins, Marti Caine, Robert Ludlum and Leo Kessler.
I’ve worked as a reporter and sub-editor on daily newspapers and contributed freelance work to magazines. In occasional interludes I also tried my hand at driving buses and trains, flying gliders, selling glassware, delivering bread and some long-ago soldiering.
