Robert Daws Books in Order

If you want the full story from the beginning: The Rock → Poisoned Rock → The Killing Rock
If you like detective partnerships taking shape: The Rock → Poisoned Rock
If wartime secrets and espionage sound best: Poisoned Rock → The Killing Rock
If you want the biggest, most elusive case: The Killing Rock

Robert Daws was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, trained at RADA, and built a long acting career across British television, stage, and radio. Many viewers know him from Jeeves and Wooster, Outside Edge, Roger Roger, and The Royal, where he became a familiar face by playing men who could be funny, brusque, warm, or slightly exasperated, sometimes all at once.

He spent years learning how scenes work from the inside.

Before the novels, crime was already part of his working life. On radio he co-created the detective series Trueman and Riley with Brian B. Thompson, and he also performed widely for the BBC. His move into fiction seems to have come from the practical side of storytelling too: a screenplay that did not get made was reshaped into The Rock, the first Sullivan and Broderick mystery, published in 2012.

Gibraltar gave him the setting that made the books click. Daws has spoken about writing about places he knows and enjoys, and he has had a long association with Gibraltar. He has said the climate drew him in, but so did the people, the history, the geography, and the fact that the Royal Gibraltar Police is one of the oldest police forces based on the British system.

Gibraltar is never just a backdrop in these books.

In The Rock, readers meet DS Tamara Sullivan, sent from London's Met to Gibraltar after a bad decision, and DCI Gus Broderick, her wary new boss. Poisoned Rock expands the series into wartime secrets and espionage, while The Killing Rock raises the stakes again with a brutal present-day case haunted by the past. What readers often respond to is the mix of police procedure and place: narrow streets, sea light, old tunnels, and a small territory where history has a habit of walking into the room uninvited.

Daws writes crime fiction with an actor's sense of timing. The books move quickly, the dialogue matters, and the partnership at the center does a lot of the work. Sullivan is sharp, stubborn, and carrying baggage from London. Broderick is more seasoned, more guarded, and deeply tied to Gibraltar. Their differences give the series its spark. If you like mysteries where professional respect has to be earned, and where buried secrets matter as much as the body on the floor, his work fits that bill.

Away from the page, his life still looks like a blend of theatre, broadcasting, and books. He has continued acting on screen and stage, has appeared at literary festivals, and lives in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, with his family. He helped set up the Ampthill Literary Festival. On his own site he comes across as funny and unforced: he plays the trumpet, likes a good roast dinner, and is plainly very fond of Gibraltar, especially Europa Point.

That mix of craft, place, and lived-in warmth is probably why his crime novels feel so readable. They are not trying to impress you with noise. They want to pull you into a case, introduce you to the people, and keep you there.