Mat Coward Books in Order

Mat Coward is a British writer born in 1960 whose work has moved easily between crime fiction, science fiction, children’s stories, humour, gardening, and radio. He lives in Britain’s West Country, and his career has been built around the practical reality of freelance writing rather than one neat shelf in a bookshop.

His published book record begins in the mid-1990s with Cannibal Victims Speak Out! And Other Astonishing Press Cuttings, a collection of bizarre headlines, misprints, and unintended comic moments from the press. It set out a pattern that turns up again and again in his work: a sharp eye for the absurd, a fondness for odd details, and a refusal to treat ordinary life as entirely ordinary.

Crime novels gave Coward a continuing cast to work with. Up and Down introduced Detective Inspector Don Packham and Police Constable Frank Mitchell, an uneasy but effective pair investigating crimes in the fictional north London district of Cowden. The books that followed, In and Out, Over and Under, and Open and Closed, keep the cases local while making room for pub darts, allotments, public libraries, campaign groups, and the small irritations of public life.

The jokes matter, but so do the crimes.

Coward’s standalone work often takes a bigger sideways step. Acts of Destruction is a future-set crime novel in a Britain reshaped by shortages, local food production, and major political change. It begins with a suspicious death, then broadens into a story where stolen crops, a missing child, and competing ideas about the future all matter. The book asks serious questions, but it does so through detectives, disputes, and people trying to get on with the job.

For younger readers, The Soother’s Boy heads into fantasy. Its young hero, Rill, is sent to the city as an apprentice who calms magical creatures after their power has been removed. The setting is strange and often unsettling, but the story stays close to Rill’s confusion, courage, and friendship with Challi. Coward also collected his shorter speculative work in So Far, So Near, where aliens, time travel, ghosts, and uncanny everyday problems are treated with both curiosity and dry humour.

Short fiction has been a major part of his career. His crime stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and his story Twelve of the Little Buggers was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2001. Later, On Borrowed Time received Edgar and Macavity Award nominations in 2016. Those stories show how much he can do in a small space, often starting with a familiar situation and nudging it somewhere unexpected.

Coward has also written about writing itself. Success... and How to Avoid It is a funny, blunt guide to the hazards of trying to earn a living as a freelancer. It draws on the unstable, sometimes ridiculous side of creative work, while still offering useful advice to people tempted by the same path.

He has kept busy beyond books, too. Coward has written a gardening column for the Morning Star and worked as a researcher and scriptwriter for QI. He also wrote the Doctor Who audio story Upstairs, a First Doctor adventure set in the attic spaces of Number 10 Downing Street.

That range feels very much like the point. A Coward book may involve a murder, a magical factory, a strange headline, or a disputed fact about the world, but it usually has room for a good question and a wry joke.