The Horizontal Champ

Books

The Patrick Bryce Series

A horizontal champ is an old boxing term, used, when I heard it in 1970s South London, as an almost affectionate way of calling someone a failure. That’s who Patrick Bryce is.

In other words, he’s not your usual crime book ex-military, macho vigilante type. Off a South London estate, he now lives a fragile life in Malaga where he runs a failing agency specialising in tracking debtors and finding people. But what really motivates him, apart from a desire not to return to his old life in London, is his relationship with a Spanish-Moroccan woman called Mamouna Amrouche.

On the surface, she’s very different to him. Goodlooking, ambitious, a stylish woman but also looking for an exit from her own life back in Spanish Ceuta where she grew up in a decidedly criminal neighbourhood.

And that exit centres on the success of Patrick as he negotiates his way through jobs that on the surface don’t look too risky, but turn out very much so.

The Horizontal Champ is the first in a series, as we follow him around Europe in his search for the elusive and the hard to find.

Archive

Features and Interviews

1950s Tangiers, in those days an international zone run by Spain, France and the UK, a city with a reputation for loose control and Western immorality. It was there that three writers crossed paths, all three going on to literary fame.

This part of the website is about when I met all three, sometimes in London, but also in Tangiers itself.

About

I write crime fiction set in mainly port cities all over Europe. The first three, all forthcoming, are set in Malaga, Marseille and Hamburg.

Contact

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