John Harvey (born 21 December 1938 in London) is a British author of crime fiction most famous for his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, based in the City of Nottingham. He is also a screenwriter and poet.

Writing career

Harvey has published over 100 books under various names, and has worked on scripts for TV and radio. He started writing in the 1970s when he produced a variety of pulp fiction including westerns. He also ran Slow Dancer Press from 1977 to 1999 publishing poetry. His own poetry has been published in a number of chapbooks and two collections, "Ghosts of a Chance" and "Bluer Than This", published by Smith/Doorstop. In 2014 Smith/Doorstop published a New & Selected Poems, "Out of Silence". The first Resnick novel, Lonely Hearts, was published in 1989, and was named by The Times as one of the 100 Greatest Crime Novels of the Century. Harvey brought the series to an end in 2014 with Darkness, Darkness, which he dramatised for the stage and which was produced at Nottingham Playhouse in 2014. The next series from Harvey was the Frank Elder series. The first novel in that series, Flesh and Blood, won Harvey the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2004, an accolade many crime fiction critics thought long overdue. In 2007 he was awarded the Diamond Dagger for a Lifetime's Contribution to the genre.

Nottingham links

Harvey moved to Nottingham in the 1960s in order to teach English and Drama at Heanor Aldercar Secondary School in South East Derbyshire. Towards the end of the 1960s he left Nottingham to teach first in Andover, Hampshire, and then in Stevenage, Herts, returning to Nottingham to study for an MA in the Department of American Studies at the University of Nottingham. . On 14 July 2009, he received an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Nottingham in recognition of his literary eminence and his associations with both the university and Nottingham (particularly in the Charlie Resnick novels). He is a Notts County F.C. fan and honorary member of its supporters club. Since 2016 he has been President of Bromley House Library. He now lives in London.

Standalone novels

Charlie Resnick series

Frank Elder

Scott Mitchell

Short stories

Awards and accolades