William Hussey is the author of over a dozen award-winning novels for adults and children. Growing up on a travelling fairground, and with family roots reaching as far back as the Victorian travelling fairs (his great-grandfather was business partners with Tom Norman, the infamous ‘Silver King’ and exhibitor of The Elephant Man), William has now put his unique cultural heritage and insights into creating Scott Jericho, the first Showman detective in crime fiction history.
As a child, William became a devotee of crime fiction, from Poe and Sherlock Holmes, through the Golden Age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers to modern writers such as Ruth Rendell and Colin Dexter. In fact, it was Dexter who gave a teenage William his first encouragement as a writer. Meeting the famed creator of Inspector Morse at a book festival, William asked advice on how he too could one day – perhaps – invent an ingenious detective. ‘Read a lot and write a lot,’ was Dexter’s pearl of wisdom, ‘and I’m certain I will see you in print in the future.’ In tribute to such kindness, William decided his detective would be named ‘Scott Jericho’, referencing Dexter’s fifth Morse novel, The Dead of Jericho.
Today, William lives in the seaside town of Skegness with his faithful dog Bucky and a lively imagination. He maintains regular contact with his fairground community, providing all the rich and vivid detail that goes into the Jericho thrillers. His aim with these novels is not only to create baffling mysteries with gasp-out-loud twist endings, but to provide a unique insight into a still largely hidden – and often misrepresented – world.
With Jericho's Dead – the sequel to Killing Jericho – out in February, William is currently working on the third in the series. A case that will involve a ‘locked room mystery’ never seen before in the genre!