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Mark McCrum began his career as a travel writer, with well-received books about Southern Africa ('Happy Sad Land'), Australia ('No Worries') and Ireland ('The Craic'). He then turned to documenting two landmark television series in '1900 House' and 'Castaway 2000', both top ten bestsellers. This led to his revealing account of Robbie Williams on tour round Europe, 'Somebody Someday', which reached no.1 in both hardback and paperback.
His next book was 'Going Dutch In Beijing', a lighthearted account of the differences in etiquette around the world, which was translated into eight languages. He then collaborated with the journalist Danny Danziger on a book about elusive words for common objects, 'The Thingummy' (released in the US as 'The Whatchamacallit'). His most recent non-fiction book is 'Walking With The Wounded', which tells the extraordinary story of four wounded soldiers and their successful attempt to reach the North Pole.
As a ghost writer he has worked for a variety of clients, including victims of forced marriage ('Jack and Zena'), the TV explorer Bruce Parry ('Tribe') and global language expert Adam Jacot de Boinot ('The Meaning of Tingo'). As a journalist he has written for most of the nationals and magazines such as Conde Nast Traveller.
In 2014, Mark started writing crime fiction, starting with 'The Festival Murders', set at a typically rural English literary festival, which was 'Thriller of the Week' in the Daily Mail, as well as being selected by the Independent for its 'Not the Booker' summer reads longlist. He followed this with 'Cruising to Murder', which takes his detective Francis Meadowes well away from the UK on a luxury cruise along the coast of West Africa, with a denouement on a remote island in Guinea-Bissau. ('An intriguing, gentle mystery … with the inevitable eclectic mix of characters - none of whom would be out of place in an Agatha Christie tale - it has a charm and wit that the mistress of crime herself might admire' - Daily Mail). The third in the series, 'Murder Your Darlings', set at a creative writing retreat in a beautiful villa in the hills of Tuscany was selected as a 'Book of the Year' by both the Mail on Sunday and the Literary Review.
In 2023, Mark published his next whodunnit, ‘Ghosted’, a standalone about a wealthy architect who wakes up at his own funeral, only to realise that he has not just died, but been murdered. What follows is a darkly comic paranormal adventure as our hero tries to find out which of his friends or family arranged the carefully-staged ‘suicide’ which killed him. This is a story where the corpse is the detective.
In February 2024 the fourth in the Francis Meadowes series was published by Bloodhound Books, who have reissued the first three whodunnits on Kindle and in paperback. ‘Murder on Tour’ takes Francis on his first ever paid assignment, as he is asked to join the entourage of gender fluid pop star Jonni K on a tour round Europe where things are not going to plan. After a crew member apparently overdoses on a tour bus in Scandinavia, Jonni is attacked on stage in Hamburg and his lead guitarist is electrocuted during a gig in Rotterdam. When another band member becomes a victim, Francis realizes he is in a dangerous race against time …
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