A far cry from seven years ago when a previous publisher, timorously you might think, sent out one of his books with a money back sticker if readers hadn't enjoyed it.

It's unlikely many asked for a refund. As with his latest, Knife Edge,* he can keep you turning the pages.

This is the tenth in 15 years for the former journalist from Bents Green, Sheffield, who still has a nose for a good story.

Knife Edge is about how smuggling, immigrant labour and gangmasters all help to keep prices low in the supermarkets with a typhoid outbreak and three murders to help things along.

"A lot of my books are about fairly topical subjects - GM foods, the Dalai Llama and the surveillance society," he says.

A Kurdish couple are smuggled into Britain and the husband murdered almost immediately. The wife goes on the run, picking and sorting vegetables for crooked gangmasters on the flat lands of Norfolk.

She's being chased by the criminals - she has to be eliminated as a witness - the police and the hero, a national newspaper reporter who goes under cover as an immigrant worker to find her before the people smugglers do.

Don't expect a dashing hero.

"I liked the idea of an asthmatic 40-year-old, not some tough, hard-nosed young journalist," says Paul, aged 50, who worked on the old Morning Telegraph from 1979 to 1982.

What do you think? Post your comments below.
All over-40 journalists will be with him on that one especially as the hero gets the girl next to a patch of nettles on page 374.

His research is pretty convincing, He read up on the subject and for the locations took trips to Norfolk. For this former native of the county, his descriptions are spot on.

He was amazed by what he unearthed, not only the appalling conditions which are graphically described but the crazy way the food supply system works.

"Marks & Spencer fly polythene trays with chives out to Kenya and they come back with green beans tied up with the chives."

His books are published all around the world, including America and the Commonwealth with translations in French, Dutch, Portuguese and even Czech, "although you have no idea how it has been translated."

For Paul, whose CV runs from being a lifeguard to co-scriptwriter of the last three series of 'Allo 'Allo, writing is very much routine.

"I work at home, at a desk, at about 9 or 9.30. I write with a pen and then put it on the computer, which is a bit like a mini-edit.

"I then work pretty much through the day. It's a good day if I get three or four pages down, thats 1,000 words."

He is already working on his next book - a sequel to a previous thriller, Sleepers, about the search for a priceless violin.

Two things are guaranteed: there'll be a murder or two and you'll keep turning the pages.

*Published in hardback by Endeavour at £18.99.


READ MORE
Your letters.
Today's features.
Latest sport.
Main news index.