Andy Griffee Books in Order

Andy Griffee was born in Gibraltar and grew up as an army kid, moving through garrison towns in the UK, Germany and Hong Kong. Before long he was at boarding school near Dover, and that stop-start early life helps explain why place matters so much in his fiction. His books are full of real locations, working communities and people who notice more than they meant to.

Before he published fiction, he spent years telling other people's stories.

He started in journalism with a two-year cub reporter apprenticeship, studied literature at the University of Manchester, then returned to reporting at the Bath Evening Chronicle. From there he joined BBC News and stayed for twenty-five years, working in Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham and London. He rose through the ranks to become Controller of BBC English Regions and later Editorial Director of the BBC's W1 Project, the redevelopment of Broadcasting House.

That news background matters.

Griffee's crime novels have the feel of someone who knows how institutions work, how local rumour travels, and how ordinary lives can get caught in a much bigger story. After leaving the BBC he worked as a media consultant on projects in Dubai, Malaysia, Qatar and China, but fiction was the long-held plan. In 2019 he published Canal Pushers, the first Johnson and Wilde mystery, and finally gave himself a second career.

He didn't leave journalism behind, he smuggled it into crime fiction.

His best-known books follow Jack Johnson, a divorced ex-journalist living on a narrowboat, and Nina Wilde, the young war widow who becomes his uneasy partner in sleuthing and something more. Canal Pushers starts with a fresh start on the Midlands canals that turns into a murder hunt. River Rats moves the action to Bath and the River Avon, where local politics, development pressure and violent crime begin to mix. Oxford Blues takes Jack and Nina to Oxford, while Devil's Den gives the series a shorter, eerier underground turn. In Tulip Murders, the pair head to Amsterdam and run into a killing spree marked by a long-lost tulip.

What readers tend to like is easy to spot. The waterways are not just backdrop. They shape the mood, the pace and the kind of people Jack and Nina meet. Griffee writes about towpaths, locks, moorings and river communities in a way that feels close-up and practical, but he also likes a strong mystery engine. His stories often draw on real-world crime anxieties, from drownings and organised crime to corruption, blackmail and the quiet pressure of money and power. Even Eddie the border terrier helps keep things warm when the plots turn dark.

Now he lives in the Worcestershire countryside with his wife Helen, three dogs and, by his own account, occasional herds of free-range rare-breed pigs. He has a son who works in sports journalism and a daughter who is a fashion designer. When he is not writing, he still likes hiring narrowboats and finding new stretches of water to turn into trouble for Jack Johnson.