City on Fire

Graham Bartlett was a UK police officer in Sussex for thirty years and now he is a best-selling crime writer.

He mainly policed the city of Brighton and Hove, rising to become a Chief Superintendent and its police commander. On the way he was a homicide senior investigating officer and led on managing dangerous offenders, sexual offences, domestic violence, child protection and hate crime. He was a qualified firearms and public order commander, leading the policing of many armed operations, large scale protests and sporting events.

He started writing when he left the police in 2013 and entered the Sunday Times Top Ten with his first non-fiction book, Death Comes Knocking – Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton in 2016. He followed that up in 2020 with another non-fiction , Babes in the Wood, the harrowing 32 year fight to bring a double child killer to justice. Both these books he co-wrote with international best seller, Peter James. He has now struck out on his own and turned his hand to fiction with a crime series in the pipeline.

As well as writing, Graham is a police procedural and crime advisor helping scores of authors and TV writers (including Peter James, Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths, Claire McGowan and Dorothy Koomson) achieve authenticity in their drama. He works flexibly with authors at all stages of their writing career and adopts an ethos of ‘creativity with credibility.’ Graham teaches on courses and Masters programmes and runs a series of hugely popular online courses and workshops under the banner of ‘Crime Writing: Making it Real’ with the Professional Writing Academy.

He lives in mid-Sussex with his wife and ever-returning 24-year-old triplets.