Alex Grecian

Alex Grecian (; born Alexander Douglas Grecian on August 6, 1969) is an American author of short fiction, novels, comic books, and graphic novels. His notable works include the comic book series Proof and the novels in the Scotland Yard's Murder Squad series: The Yard, The Black Country, The Devil's Workshop, The Harvest Man, Lost and Gone Forever, and The Blue Girl. He has been nominated for the for Best Debut Novel for The Yard, The Dilys Award for The Black Country, and the Barry Award for Best First Novel for The Yard. He was also the recipient of an Inkpot Award in 2018 and of the Kansas Notable Book Awards from the State Library of Kansas for The Yard, The Black Country, The Devil's Workshop, Lost and Gone Forever, and Red Rabbit.

Career

Literary influences

As a child and a teenager, Grecian read the works of C. S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe. He later became a fan of crime fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Graham Greene, Donald E. Westlake, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald. Other influences include John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, and Stephen King.

Comics and graphic novels

Grecian's first comic book work, released in 2006, was a collaboration with Canadian comic book artist and illustrator Riley Rossmo on Seven Sons, a graphic novel based on the anonymously written Chinese folktale Ten Brothers known to be written around the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). In 2007, he started work on Proof, also with Riley Rossmo. NPR named this series one of the best books of 2009. Grecian and Rossmo started on their third project together, Rasputin, in the fall of 2014. This series is a work of fiction based on the life of Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin was a mystical adviser in the court of Czar Nicholas II of Russia in the early nineteen hundreds.

In 2013, with fellow creators B. Clay Moore, Jeremy Haun, and Seth Peck, Grecian developed the anthology Bad Karma using a Kickstarter campaign. Bad Karma is a hardcover comics, prose and art collection featuring five separate, inter-related creator-owned concepts.

Novels

In May 2012 Grecian's debut novel The Yard was released by G. P. Putnam's Sons. This novel is the first in the Murder Squad Series. The second novel in the series, The Black Country, was released in May 2013, then the third, The Devil's Workshop in May 2014, the fourth, The Harvest Man in May 2015, and the fifth, Lost and Gone Forever in May 2016. The e-book The Blue Girl is also a story of the Murder Squad and was released in June 2013. In April 2018 Grecian released the stand-alone book The Saint of Wolves and Butchers also published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. In September 2023, Grecian released the novel Red Rabbit, published by Tor Books. The stand-alone sequel, Rose of Jericho, will be released in March 2025 also by Tor Books.