William Shaw

Great crime fiction


Hardback July 3rd 2025
“I’ve always loved Shaw’s writing – the clarity of the prose and the terrific characterisation- but I think The Red Shore is perhaps his best yet.” Ann Cleeves
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THE RED SHORE: NEW IN 2025

A THRILLING NEW SERIES SET IN DEVON: SAY HELLO TO EDEN DRISCOLL

Met detective Eden Driscoll never wanted a child, but when his estranged sister vanishes from her sailboat, he is asked to look after her son Finn – the nephew he hadn’t even known existed.

Resettled in the seaside town of Teignmouth, Eden adjusts to his newfound parenthood. Then Finn disappears from school, and Eden knows something is dreadfully wrong.

When Eden’s sister’s body is finally found, floating in the sea, local police rule her death an accident, but Eden isn’t convinced. She was an experienced sailor and would never sail without a life jacket. Eden starts searching his sister’s life for answers, and what he discovers changes everything.

“William Shaw is yet to write a bad sentence, and The Red Shore continues that remarkable trend. Expertly paced with beautifully drawn characters, William weaves a plot that’s twistier than a cramping snake into the stunning setting of a small Devon fishing town. Highly recommended.” M. W. Craven

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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.