Barry Faulkner

Barry Faulkner was born into an extended family of petty criminals in Herne Hill, South London. His father, uncles and older siblings ran with the notorious Richardson Crime family from time to time. At this point we must point out that he did not follow in that family tradition although the characters he met and their escapades he witnessed have added a certain authenticity to his books.

His mother was a fashion model and had great theatrical aspirations for young Faulkner and pushed him into auditioning for the Morley Academy of Dramatic Art at the Elephant and Castle, where he was accepted but only lasted three months before being asked to leave as no visible talent had surfaced.

His early writing career was as a copywriter with the advertising agency Erwin Wasey Ruthrauff & Ryan in Paddington, during which time he got lucky with some light entertainment scripts sent to the BBC and Independent Television and became a script editor and writer on a freelance basis, working on most of the LE shows of the 1980-90s. During that period, while living out of a suitcase in UK hotels for a lot of the time, he filled many notebooks with DCS Palmer case plots; and in 2015 he finally found time to start putting them in order and into book form. Thirteen are finished and published so far plus the first books in The Ben Nevis and The Gold Digger private eye series, with more to come in both series. On the factual side Faulkner has London Crime, a book detailing the big UK heists and the 'geezers watt did 'em' from 1930s on and UK Serial Killers looking at the serial killers from 1930 on, their lives, crimes and punishments. Faulkner also regularly gives illustrated talks on that era to WI and other social clubs.