Author Description

<p><b>Winner of the prestigious CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER AWARD 2022</b><br> <br> Longlisted for the <b>Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year 2022</b><br> <br> <b>'Heart-pounding, hilarious, sharp and shocking, <i>Dead Ground</i> is further proof that M.W. Craven never disappoints. Miss this series at your peril.' Chris Whitaker</b><br> <br> <b>'Dark and entertaining, this is top rank crime fiction.' Vaseem Khan, Author of the Malabar House series and the Baby Ganesh Agency series</b><br> <br> <b>'M. W. Craven is one of the best crime writers working today. <i>Dead Ground</i> is a cracking puzzle, beautifully written, with characters you'll be behind every step of the way. It's his best yet.' Stuart Turton</b><br> <br> <b>'Fantastic' Martina Cole</b><br> <b><br> 'Dark, sharp and compelling' Peter James</b><br> <br> <b>'You can taste the authenticity' <i>Daily Mail</i></b><br> <br> Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused - he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp - but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows.<br> <br> As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions: despite being heavily vetted for a high-profile job, why does nothing in the victim's background check out? Why was a small ornament left at the murder scene - and why did someone on the investigation team steal it? And what is the connection to a flawlessly executed bank heist three years earlier, a heist where nothing was taken . . .<br> <br> <br> <b>Praise for <i>Dead Ground:</i></b><br> <br> <b>'Unmissable' <i>Sunday Express</i><br></b><br> <b>'I've been following M.W. Craven's Poe/Tilly series from the very beginni