Peter May

After accumulating more than 1000 television writing credits in 15 years, Peter May has returned to his first passion - writing novels. Now, as an honorary member of the Chinese Crime Writers' Association, the Scotsman has been winning praise for his outstanding China thrillers.

Scottish Young Journalist of the Year in 1973, he had his first novel published at the age of 26. He then left journalism and became one of Scotland's most successful and prolific television dramatists. By the age of 30 he had created two major TV series, The Standard and Squadron, for the BBC.

During his time as storyliner and script editor on Scottish Television's Take The High Road, in the 1980's, the popular drama serial achieved record audience figures. In the 1990's, as producer and creator of the highly-acclaimed Machair, he led a 70-strong crew and cast to film in the remote islands of the Outer Hebrides. The ground-breaking Gaelic drama serial which, with English subtitles, achieved a remarkable 33% audience share, made it regularly into the Top Ten in the ratings in Scotland where only 2% of the population are Gaelic speakers.

During this time, he was still writing novels and being published. He wrote The Reporter, based on the BBC TV series, The Standard; Fallen Hero, a novelisation of the Granada TV Series of the same name; Hidden Faces, a political thriller set in Brussels (published as The Man With No Face in the U.S.); and The Noble Path, a very human story played out amidst the ruins of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Drawn back to the East, May quit television in 1996 to concentrate full-time on writing novels. The first of his China thrillers, The Firemaker, was published in 1999 in the UK. Taking the reader on a vivid journey through the backstreets of Beijing and behind the scenes of the Chinese Police system, May received outstanding critical acclaim.

His follow-up, The Fourth Sacrifice, was published in January 2000, featuring the same winning combination of Beijing detective Li Yan and Chicago pathologist Margaret Campbell.

The Killing Room, was published in paperback in May 2001. The latest, and most highly praised of the series to date, it was selected in December 2000 as one of the "best original titles in hardback", confirming May's growing reputation in the genre.

Snakehead, the recently completed fourth book in the series, is scheduled for publication in early 2002.

May - whose writing has been described as 'Cruz Smith meets Cornwell' - travels annually to China and the USA to research his books, and acknowledges the help given to him by the extraordinary network of contacts he has made through the internet, and the unprecedented access they have secured for him behind the scenes in both China and the U.S.