A bit about me. I always knew that I would write. I knew that nothing would stop me. I always loved stories, I always found that books engaged me like nothing else, and helped me to make sense of the world.

I left school at 16, did a number of low paid unskilled jobs, and I was working on the night shift in Gordon’s Gin Distillery in Islington when I was offered my first job in journalism on New Musical Express. Since then I have had my lean years as well as my good years – careers are never linear, you have to expect set-backs along the way – but I have become an award winning journalist and bestselling novelist, and my books have been published in over 40 languages, most recently Vietnamese.My semi-autobiographical novel, Man and Boy, won the Book of the Year prize.

Other novels that did well include One for my Baby, Man and Wife, Men from the Boys, My Favourite Wife and Catching the Sun. Julia Roberts liked my novel The Family Way so much that she bought the film rights. I also wrote a novel about my wild years at the NME, called Stories We Could Tell, which all takes place on the night that Elvis died.

But the next few years are all about Detective Max Wolfe. The Murder Bag is the first of a trilogy of crime novels featuring Max and his world – his five-year-old daughter Scout, their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, The Black Museum, 27 Savile Row, and the Max Wolfe lair – their home is a big loft that overlooks Smithfield meat market. I am currently working on the second Max Wolfe book, The Slaughter Man, which will appear in 2015. The third Max Wolfe book will be published in 2016. I have the title and the plot but I will keep it under my hat for now.

I live in London with my wife, our daughter and our dog Stan – who has provided the model for Max Wolfe’s fictional dog, also called Stan, and who will now only speak to me through his lawyers. I really hope that you like The Murder Bag.

Love and luck.

Tony Parsons.