By the time Canoe Man John Darwin’s case file hit my desk I was looking  back on a career involving 40 murder investigations.

The only death in this case was the one Darwin faked before turning up in Panama – it kept headline writers across the world busy for months.

As Detective Superintendent in charge of Cleveland Police’s Murder Squad it made a change to head a case launched because the victim was alive.

The investigation even saw me invited to study with retired members of the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit – my own slice of ‘Silence of the Lambs’

Now that I am retired from the force, I can hopefully bring my inside knowledge of police procedure to bear on my fiction.

I’ve been an avid reader since childhood and took up writing to fill in those long winter days when the fair weather walker in me refused to leave the house.

I start mentally developing a book in my head with the simple premise: if that crime occurred, how would I investigate it?

After that I just write: no planning, no characters, no plot. Go with the flow and see where it leads.

I love not knowing where the book is going and how it will end. If I’m still guessing what’s going to happen, hopefully the reader is too.

It is not unlike the way a murder investigation opens up as you start to examine the evidence, which might be why I feel at home doing it.