Alex Howard Books in Order

Alex Howard is the name Alex Coombs used for the first Hanlon crime novels, and it fits the hard edge of those books well. He was born in Lambeth, south London, in 1961, and grew up in Buckinghamshire, in the Chilterns near High Wycombe. School was in Marlow, which gave him one foot in town life and one in quieter country landscapes, both of which later found their way into his fiction.

He did not come to writing by a neat, straight line.

Coombs studied Arabic and Islamic History at St Peter's College, Oxford, and later at Edinburgh University. He then spent time living and working in the Middle East before returning to London. For years he worked in adult education and TEFL, teaching rather than plotting murders, and that background seems to have given him a sharp eye for how people talk, bluff, and hold things back.

Another career turn came when he was at home looking after his children. He retrained as a chef and worked in a range of kitchens, including restaurants, hotels, and a conference centre. That practical kitchen life shows up all over his books, not just in the food, but in the pace, the pressure, and the way his characters respond when things start to go wrong.

The first books many readers meet are the Hanlon novels, especially Time to Die and An Incidental Death. These are dark police stories built around a detective who is fierce, stubborn, and often at odds with the system she works for. Readers who click with Hanlon usually like that mix of toughness, moral mess, and genuine feeling for the vulnerable people caught up in the cases. The books are gritty, but they are also interested in loyalty, damage, and the cost of pushing too hard for justice.

Later, writing as Alex Coombs, he returned to Hanlon in a new phase with books such as Silenced For Good and Buried For Good. These move Hanlon to Scotland and give the series a colder, lonelier feel. The west coast setting, the islands, the weather, and the sense of old secrets sitting just below the surface all become part of the tension. That change of scene matters, but the core interest stays the same: capable people under strain, trying to do the right thing in bad conditions.

He also has a lighter side. The Old Forge Café mysteries, beginning with Murder on the Menu, put chef Charlie Hunter at the center of village murder cases in the Chilterns. These books still have sharp plotting, but they make more room for cooking, work, small-town friction, and the odd comedy of trying to run a restaurant while somebody nearby keeps turning up dead. The food detail feels lived in because, in his case, it is.

That spread of work makes sense when you look at his own background. He knows classrooms, kitchens, London streets, Scottish settings, and the social codes of very different worlds. Across both the darker Hanlon books and the warmer village mysteries, he tends to come back to the same things: hidden motives, professional skill, pressure, and places that matter as much as the plot. Even when the tone changes, the interest in how people behave under stress stays put.

These days he lives between Bucks and Edinburgh. He has said he enjoys learning languages, dogs, art galleries, boxing, yoga, running, and eating out, which feels pretty consistent with the books themselves, curious, disciplined, and alert to detail.

A writer with a chef's sense of timing is not a bad thing to be.