John Lincoln Books in Order

John Lincoln is the crime-fiction name of John Lincoln Williams, a Cardiff-born Welsh writer who has also published as John Williams and John L. Williams. His novels keep returning to the city he knows best, particularly its docks, pubs, back streets, music venues and places caught between decline and redevelopment.

Born in Cardiff in 1961, Williams grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood of the city. As a teenager, he fell hard for punk, moved to London, lived in Camden Town and played in bands. He also spent time in Paris.

Music got him moving, but writing became the job that lasted.

His route into books ran through journalism and criticism. After discovering the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, he began reviewing books and later wrote on crime, fiction and travel. His early nonfiction, Into the Badlands, mixed travel writing with interviews with American crime writers. It set out an interest that has never really left him: how crime stories reveal a place and the people trying to get by in it.

That interest became much more personal in Bloody Valentine, his nonfiction account of the Lynette White case and the wrongful convictions that followed. Researching the book took him deep into Butetown, Cardiff's old docklands community. Later, he said that the experience left him wanting to write not only about its hardship, but also its humour and energy.

That wish led to Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub, a run of linked stories about people moving through Butetown's bars, streets and small-time economies. It began the Cardiff Trilogy, continued in Cardiff Dead and The Prince of Wales. He returned to the city again in Temperance Town, following three very different men through its nightlife and hard edges. Across these books, old friends, musicians, hustlers, journalists and would-be property players find their lives brushing against one another as Cardiff changes around them.

Nobody gets a simple fresh start in these books.

He returned to crime fiction as John Lincoln with Fade to Grey, introducing Gethin Grey and the Last Resort Legals team, who investigate possible miscarriages of justice. Grey in the Dark brings Gethin back for another case in south Wales. Readers who enjoy these novels tend to come for the investigations, but stay for the flawed people, dark jokes and close attention to the pressures of work, money, family and local history.

Williams's work stretches beyond fiction. He has written biographies of Shirley Bassey, Michael X and C. L. R. James, as well as journalism and criticism. He lives in London and remains connected to Welsh literary life as a co-organiser and literary director of the Laugharne Weekend festival. Cardiff, though, is still the place that keeps pulling his stories back.