Those who have been hotly anticipating Simon Mason‘s new DI Ryan Wilkins Mystery can rest assured, the time is approaching.
Lock the doors, turn off your phone and prepare to indulge as Oxford’s most unlikely and enjoyable detective duo spring back into action after a professor is found dead, spreadeagled on a hotel lawn still in his pyjamas.
If you haven’t come across Simon Mason’s DI Ryan Wilkins mysteries yet, then you’re missing a trick, because they are clever, witty, all enveloping and utterly unputdownable, his fans grabbing at each new edition like a drowning man to a life raft. READ ABOUT SIMON HERE
simon mason fans grab at each new edition like a drowning man to a life raft
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT is the fourth in the series, and as riveting as ever; Ryan Wilkins coming up against a new, formidable Super, shop-lifters and some troubllng revelations in his private life, let alone the double murder he needs to solve.
His cohort Di Ray Wilkins is the total antithesis; keen to make a good impression to the detriment of everyone else, until he too is forced to make a stand.
Published in January 2025, you know what to put on Your Christmas list!
But in the meantime, why not whet your teeth on Mason’s Finder series, because writing one incredible whodunit a year isn’t enough apparently.
The two missing person novels, The Case Of The Lonely Accountant and Missing Alice have been published concurrently and focus on The Finder who is employed by local police forces to find certain missing people dead or alive.
Which means Mason is in even hotter demand on the book circuit, something he is slowly coming to terms with as his books’ popularity soar with every page turned.
Clearly enjoying it, Simon says: “I did the Harrogate Crime Festival recently and had to get up and talk in front of 900 people,” as we sit in our usual haunt in Oxford’s Covered Market. “I felt ill, because as you know authors are shy and retiring types, but when the questions started coming you couldn’t shut me up,” he laughs.
With his books currently being translated into numerous languages and an international audience beginning to sit up and take notice, his notoriety is only going to increase. A literary cruise to New York as a guest speaker on the QE2 follows and several Oxford dates have already been penned in.
‘those who know most about missing people are not the police, but the people who knew them best, who are more emotionally invested’
With so much acclaim for the DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries why start an entirely new flight of novels? “I wanted to write something totally different, something not in Oxford, so I based them on a Maigret style format – where it’s not so much about The Finder but the people he meets and talks to, to help him piece together what happened.
“And I like the idea that each of the Finder books can be stand alones, with different parameters. It helps me escape from the Ryans for a while because I invest so much in them,” Simon explains.
“Besides, those who know most about missing people are not the police, but the people who knew them best, who are more emotionally invested, so it’s more about those relationships, because the ones left behind keep on thinking about the missing, and often have different theories around their disappearance.
Next in the Finder pipeline is The Woman Who Laughed (coming out in June 2025), depicting a sex worker from Sheffield, and as the Finder is always reading a novel while he searches for the missing, here it will be Jane Austen.
How Simon manages to switch so effortlessly between the two remains to be seen but when asked he shrugs and says: It Isn’t difficult because I know the solutions when I start. What is difficult is to do all the research and write the books in time,” he laughs, “so I’m being as productive as possible.”
He certainly is. To see Simon Mason in the flesh he will be on CUNARD as part of the CHELTENHAM LITERARY FESTIVAL at sea (7 days from Southampton to NYC doing talks and panels), on Thursday November 28 at 6pm at WESTGATE LIBRARY, and on Saturday January 25 2025 at BOTLEY LIBRARY with fellow crime writer Cara Hunter READ ABOUT CARA HUNTER HERE at 2pm being interviewed by Ruth Cameron c/o Mostly Books
A Voice In The Night is published in hardback by Quercus on January 16 2025 and for pre-sale at all good bookshops and online.
