12:00 AM 7th October 2026
From Crime Scenes To Crime Fiction: Former Yorkshire Police Officer Launches New Thriller
Colin Campbell
A retired West Yorkshire Police officer who spent 15 years dealing with real-life crime scenes has drawn on three decades at the sharp end of policing for his latest crime thriller.
Otley-based author Colin Campbell is launching Dark Sugar Bay, the 12th novel in his acclaimed Jim Grant series, featuring a straight-talking Yorkshire police officer whose adventures have taken him from his home county to some of the most dangerous corners of America.
But behind the fictional violence, investigations and dark humour lies a career dealing with the real thing.
Colin spent 30 years with West Yorkshire Police, half of that time working in forensics and crime scenes. Before joining the police, he also served for three years in the British Army.
Those experiences have fed into a writing career which has now produced almost 50 manuscripts and more than two dozen published books.
And while Jim Grant is fictional, Colin admits there is more than a little of himself in his hero.
Lee and Colin at a book festival
“Writing crime fiction after actually doing the job gives you a different perspective. There are things about policing that television and books get right, and plenty they get wrong.
“One thing that’s often missing is the humour. Police officers can be dealing with incredibly difficult circumstances, but humour is one of the ways people cope with what they see and then get on with the job. If every fictional police officer was as relentlessly serious as some television dramas suggest, I don’t think many of us would have survived 30 years.”
Colin says his police career has influenced his fiction in ways that go far beyond procedures and forensic detail.
During his years working on crime scenes, he encountered death, violence and some of the darker sides of human behaviour, but developed a deliberately pragmatic approach to separating the job from home life.
“I never wanted to take the things I saw home with me,” he said. “You dealt with what was in front of you professionally, did the job properly and then left it at the door. Jim Grant has some of that same quality. He deals with what has to be dealt with.”
The Jim Grant series was born after Colin’s American literary agent suggested he broaden the scope of his very English crime novels by setting a story in the United States.
He didn’t believe he could convincingly write an American police officer. Instead, he sent a Yorkshire copper to America.
The resulting character first appeared in Jamaica Plain, in which Grant travels from Yorkshire to Boston to interview a prisoner – and promptly finds himself embroiled in events far beyond his original assignment.
There is also another story behind the hero’s name.
James Grant is the real name of internationally bestselling Jack Reacher creator Lee Child, who helped Colin early in his writing career by introducing him to literary agent Donna Bagdasarian.
Before using the name, Colin sent Lee a short story introducing the character and asked permission. Lee agreed, and the fictional Jim Grant was born.
Reed Farrel Coleman, Lee Child and Colin Campbell pictured at the crime fiction convention, Bouchercon
Colin said: “When my agent suggested America, my immediate thought was: ‘I can’t write American.’ Then I realised I didn’t have to. I could send an English policeman there and let him encounter America through Yorkshire eyes.
“That gave me Jim Grant. He doesn’t suddenly become American because he crosses the Atlantic. His attitude, humour and instincts remain those of a Yorkshire copper, and that contrast became a huge part of the series.”
The launch of Dark Sugar Bay comes as Colin believes audiences remain fascinated by how accurately crime novels and television dramas portray real police work.
Having spent three decades inside the profession, he says the reality can often be simultaneously more mundane and more complicated – and sometimes stranger – than fiction.
Some incidents Colin encountered during his police career have subsequently found their way into his books, albeit with names, locations and circumstances changed.
It is that first-hand knowledge, rather than simply technical research, that he believes brings authenticity to his fictional detectives.
“I don’t sit down and think, ‘How can I put my police career into a novel?’” he added. “It’s simply there. Thirty years of experience, people, conversations and situations inevitably become part of the way you tell stories.
“I’ve loved reading since I was a boy and loved writing at school, but growing up as the son of a lorry driver on a council estate, becoming a published author didn’t seem like something people like me did. Now I’m writing my 50th book.”