William Shaw

Exceptional crime fiction


MAY 23 2024
“William Shaw now rivals Ann Cleeves in the art of combining compelling mysteries with evocations of Britain’s landscape.” ★★★★★ Jake Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph
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THE WILD SWIMMERS: NEW IN 2024

WILLIAM SHAW

If only Alexandra Cupidi had turned south instead of north, she would have found the dead woman.

Instead it is her vulnerable daughter Zoë who stumbles across Mimi Greene's lifeless body on the shoreline.

A regular wild swimmer with a group of close friends, it's out of character for Mimi to have been swimming alone, especially in bad weather. D S Cupidi starts to suspect this is more than just an accidental drowning.

Meanwhile, her friend and colleague Jill Ferriter receives a mysterious letter from a man who claims to be her father. Steven Dowles has been in prison for the last twenty years, convicted of two brutal and senseless murders.

With Cupidi obsessed by the death of Mimi Greene, Jill must lean on Bill South to uncover the facts around Dowles’ conviction, revisiting old colleagues and criminals.

The Wild Swimmers is an explosive return to the DI Alexandra Cupidi Series, where the shores of the South Kent expose deadly secrets.

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News

The Bookseller, July, 2024 Award-winning crime author William Shaw has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins imprint Hemlock Press Julia Wisdom, publisher of Hemlock Press, has acquired UK and Commonwealth […]

Early reviews for The Wild Swimmers are coming in and I couldn’t be happier about how it’s being received so far. I was knocked out by this one: “William Shaw […]

On Saturday evening I got a message from my friend Roz that Chris had died. Awful, sad, a massive loss, but to be honest it wasn’t unexpected. He had been […]

Breen and Tozer

The Breen and Tozer books are set in London in 1968-1969.
Books

DS Alexandra Cupidi

The Birdwatcher was originally written as a standalone, but DS Alexandra Cupidi emerged from the book and became the basis for a series of books set in Dungeness

Books

G. W Shaw

My first name is George, but nobody has ever called me it. I was always called William, for some reason. But I decided to use G. W. Shaw as a pen name when I wrote the thriller Dead Rich – because that book was a bit different from the police novels I’d been writing.

G. W. Shaw are adventure thrillers, a genre I read a lot as a teenager –  hopefully with a contemporary twist.

Books

REVIEWS

 
One of Britain’s greatest crime writers

The Sun

 
Best Crime of 2013

Breen & Tozer 1, The Evening Standard

 
A terrifically atmospheric thriller

The Trawlerman, The Mail on Sunday

 
A modern crime master

The Sun

 
William Shaw makes his sentences sing

New York Daily News

 
Cathal Breen is altogether the most welcome crime solver in British fiction

Toronto Star

 
A contender for thriller of the year

The Birdwatcher, The Sun

 
Excellent

Salt Lane, Wall Street Journal

 
Insightful . . . An elegy for an entire alienated generation

New York Times

 
The question of why a killer kills is always central. William Shaw delivers a perfect motive in the third of his excellent Breen and Tozer mysteries…

The Spectator

 
Crime Book of the Year

BREEN & TOZER 3, SUNDAY TIMES

 
What a pleasure it is when one discovers a writer who combines ironclad storytelling techniques with the linguistic finesse of more literary novelists

Barry Forshaw, Independent

More reviews

About William Shaw

William Shaw writes the DS Alexandra Cupidi books, set in Dungeness. The Wild Swimmers, published in 2024, is the fifth in the series.

William Shaw has been longlisted three times for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger, the Barry Award, The CWA Golden Dagger and the Golden Bullet.

The Sun calls him ‘a modern crime master’. Peter May has praised him as ‘a superb storyteller’, and Peter James has hailed him as ‘one of the great rising talents of UK crime fiction.’ The Times critic Marcel Berlins said: ‘William Shaw is a superb, flowing writer, both of police procedure and personal relations, and perhaps England’s most adept at using dialogue to propel his always intelligent stories.’

Writing as G. W. Shaw, he also writes gripping adventure thrillers.

Before becoming a crime writer, William Shaw was an award-winning music journalist and the author of several non-fiction books including Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood, about a year spent with the young men of South Central Los Angeles, Spying In Guru Land, about time spent investigating religious cults, and A Superhero For Hire, a compilation of columns written for the Observer Magazine.

Starting out as assistant editor of the post-punk magazine ZigZag, he has been a journalist for The Observer, The New York Times, Wired, Arena and The Face and was Amazon UK Music Journalist of the Year in 2003.

In 2021 he created the community bookshop The Book Makers, working with the charity Creative Future and Brighton and Hove City Council. His narrative artwork 41 Places featured on BBC’s Front Row as one of the highlights of the 2007 Brighton Festival.