The Birdwatcher
A thrilling new standalone novel set in Dungeness, Kent.
"Superb description of a haunting, blighted landscape. His best book so far" C J SANSOM
"Shaw's most accomplished and most visceral book yet"
BARRY FORSHAW, THE INDEPENDENT
The Breen and Tozer books
Set in London in 1968-9, this series featuring Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen and Constable Helen Tozer have been praised by The New York Times as "an elegy for an entire neglected generation".
Book 4, Sympathy For The Devil, will be published by riverrun in the UK in May 2017.
Win books and prizes
Book groups
I'm more than happy to meet up with book groups. Get in touch via the contact form.SALT LANE
A NEW SERIES FEATURING DS ALEX CUPIDI
'William Shaw is a superb storyteller' PETER MAY
No-one knew their names, the bodies found in the water. There are people here, in plain sight, that no-one ever notices at all.
DS Alexandra Cupidi has done it again. She should have learnt to keep her big mouth shut, after the scandal that sent her packing - resentful teenager in tow - from the London Met to the lonely Kent coastline. Even murder looks different in this landscape of fens, ditches and stark beaches, shadowed by the towers of Dungeness power station. Murder looks a lot less pretty.
The man drowned in the slurry pit had been herded there like an animal. He was North African, like many of the fruit pickers that work the fields. The more Cupidi discovers, the more she wants to ask - but these people are suspicious of questions.
It will take an understanding of this strange place - its old ways and new crimes - to uncover the dark conspiracy behind the murder. Cupidi is not afraid to travel that road. But she should be. She should, by now, have learnt.
Salt Lane is the first in the new DS Alexandra Cupidi series. With his trademark characterisation and flair for social commentary, William Shaw has crafted a crime novel for our time that grips you, mind and heart.
Breen & Tozer 1
A Song from Dead Lips, published in the US as She's Leaving Home.
London, October 1968. As Beatles fans encamp outside Abbey Road Studios up the road, the Marylebone CID is as much an old boys' club as it ever was: comfortably sexist, racially prejudiced and crawling with corruption. And then a body is found...
Breen & Tozer 2
A House of Knives, published in the US as The Kings of London
London, November 1968. The decade is drawing its last breath. In Marylebone CID, suspects are beaten in the cells and the only woman is resigning. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat in his intray and a mutilated body on his hands.
Breen & Tozer 3
A Book of Scars, published in the US as A Song for the Brokenhearted. Chosen as a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year.
1969. Five years ago, teenager Alexandra Tozer was murdered on her family farm. Her sister Helen Tozer will never forget. Returning home after quitting the Met Police, she brings with her the recovering Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen, who slowly becomes possessed by the unsolved case. He discovers the Tozers were never told the whole truth.
Breen & Tozer 4
Sympathy For The Devil published in the US as Play With Fire
She made a profit from her youth. She's not beautiful anymore - but she will be young forever. Called away from his pregnant girlfriend, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen knows the sight of the murdered prostitute will be with him all his life. But this is what he does: he finds killers. Helen Tozer, more than most, understands why.
