David Hewson (British mystery writer) Add a review

David Hewson (born 9 January 1953) is a contemporary British author of mystery novels. His series of mysteries, featuring police officers In Rome, led by the young detective and art lover Nic Costa, began with A Season for the Dead, has now been contracted to run to at least nine instalments by British, American, European and Asian publishers. The author's debut novel, Shanghai Thunder, was published by Robert Hale, in the United Kingdom, in 1986. Almost all copies of the book were sent to libraries, and it has been reissued.

His second book was set in Spain during Holy Week and won the W H Smith Fresh Talent prize for one of the best first novels of 1996. Its film adaptation, released in 2002, was also titled Semana santa. Apart from that he has written a number of standalone novels, including Lucifer's Shadow and The Promised Land, and as well the second chapter of the audio serial novel The Chopin Manuscript started by Jeffery Deaver, with Lee Child and 13 other co-writers, for the audiobook site Audible.com.

Hewson wrote three novels, one based on each part of the tripartite Danish TV series The Killing. Alongside A.J. Hartley he wrote prose adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays Macbeth (released 2011) and Hamlet (released 2014) exclusively for Audible.com, and alone he wrote an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, again exclusively for Audible. The three novels were narrated by Alan Cumming and Richard Armitage (who narrated both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet), respectively.

Hewson left school at 17 and joined a local newspaper, the Scarborough Evening News, in the north of England. He was later a news, business and foreign reporter for The Times, and features editor of The Independent when it was launched in 1986. He served as a board member of International Thriller Writers Inc. for four years until 2009.