John Lawton

John Lawton is a television producer/director and author of historical/crime/espionage novels set primarily in Britain during World War II and the Cold War.

Biography Lawton worked briefly in London publishing prior to becoming, by the mid-1980s, a documentary television producer at the newly-created Channel 4. In 1993 he moved to New York, and in 1995 won a WH Smith Literary Award for his third book Black Out. He returned in 2001 with Riptide (American title: Bluffing Mr. Churchill). In 2008 he was named in the Daily Telegraph as one of "50 Crime Writers To Read Before You Die". In 2010 he was named in the New York Times Reviews "Pick of the Year" for his novel A Lily of the Field. His author biography notes that "since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills of Derbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy."

Books

Frederick Troy novels

The detective in this series, Frederick Troy, works at Scotland Yard, and is the younger son of a Russian immigrant father who has become a wealthy newspaper publisher and baronet.

Black Out (1995), , set in 1944 Old Flames (1996), , set in 1956 A Little White Death (1998), , set in the early 1960s Riptide (2001), (published in the United States (2004) as Bluffing Mr. Churchill), set in the Second World War Blue Rondo (2005), , (published in the United States as Flesh Wounds), set in the Second World War and the 1950s Second Violin (2007), , set in 1938 A Lily of the Field (2010), , set partly in 1934–46 and partly in 1948 Friends and Traitors (2017), , set in 1958 Smoke and Embers (2025),

Joe Wilderness novels The Joe Wilderness novels are historical thrillers, set in Cold War Europe.

Then We Take Berlin (2013) The Unfortunate Englishman (2016) Hammer to Fall (2020) Moscow Exile (2023)

Other fiction Sweet Sunday (2002) East of Suez, West of Charing Cross Road (included in Agents of Treachery anthology, Otto Penzler editor, 2010) Bentinck's Agent (2013)

Non-fiction 1963 Five Hundred Days: History As Melodrama (1992)

Television A Walk up 5th Avenue Christians in Palestine Free and Fair 25th Anniversary of the Mersey Poets (with Brian Patten) Green Thoughts (with Gore Vidal) O Superman (with Harold Pinter)