Howard Linskey Books in Order

If you want gritty gangland crime: The Drop → The Damage → The Dead
If you prefer police procedurals: No Name Lane → Behind Dead Eyes → The Search → The Chosen Ones
If you want standalone suspense: Alice Teale is Missing → Don't Let Him In → The Inheritance
If you want wartime historical thrillers: Hunting the Hangman → Ungentlemanly Warfare

Howard Linskey grew up in Ferryhill, County Durham, and the north-east of England has stayed at the heart of his fiction. Even when he writes about gangsters, missing children, wartime missions, or a young Shakespeare, there is usually a strong sense of place and of ordinary people caught in the middle of bigger forces.

He did not take a straight road into novels.

Before writing full time, he worked a run of jobs, including barman, journalist, catering manager, marketing manager, and various sales and account-management roles. He first saw his words in print in The Mag, the Newcastle United fanzine, then moved into journalism, writing for regional newspapers, magazines, and websites. At one point he was even covering the Premier League for a magazine in Malaysia.

That background shows in his books. He writes like someone who has spent time listening to people talk, noticing class, status, slang, and the small ways power works in daily life. His stories move quickly, but they are grounded in workplaces, pubs, streets, police stations, and newsrooms that feel properly lived in.

His first novel, The Drop, arrived in 2011 and introduced readers to David Blake, a white-collar operator pulled deep into Newcastle's criminal world. It was picked as one of the year's top five thrillers by The Times, and the David Blake books were later optioned for television. The follow-ups, The Damage and The Dead, kept the same hard edge, mixing gangland pressure with the sense that every bad choice has a bill attached.

Then he opened things out.

In the Ian Bradshaw novels, beginning with No Name Lane, he shifts into a darker blend of police procedural and investigative journalism. Ian Bradshaw works the official side of the case, while Tom Carney and Helen Norton bring the persistence, and sometimes the recklessness, of reporters. Books like Behind Dead Eyes, The Search, and The Chosen Ones are built around disappearances, cold cases, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.

He has also written standalone suspense, including Alice Teale is Missing, Don't Let Him In, and The Inheritance. These books lean into closed communities, uneasy family histories, and the fear that danger is often closest to home. Alongside the crime fiction, he has written World War II novels such as Hunting the Hangman and Ungentlemanly Warfare, plus the William Shakespeare Mysteries, where a young playwright is drawn into murder and court intrigue in Elizabethan England.

There is range here, but the through line is easy to spot. Linskey likes pressured characters, sharp moral corners, and settings that matter. He also seems happy to switch tone when he wants to. The Little Book of Pintfulness, his beer-soaked spoof of self-help wisdom, proves he can be funny too.

Now based in Hertfordshire with his wife Alison and daughter Erin, he writes full time. He is still a devoted Newcastle United supporter, which may be as good a test of endurance as any writing career.