Saturday 20th January
7pm
Low Fell Library
Durham Road

Refreshments served

An audience with Martyn Waites is entertainment! He brings his books to life, drawing on his previous professions: bar manager, stand-up comic, actor, drama teacher and you may even have bought a leather coat from him at
Newcastle Quayside market!

Martyn Waites was born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne. His first novel, Mary's Prayer, a hard-hitting gangland thriller set in the North East of England, came out in 1997. The second, Little Triggers, appeared a year later. A third, Candleland, followed in 2000. He then turned away from crime fiction and wrote a novel based around the miners' strike and its legacy, the critically acclaimed Born Under Punches. His next novel The White Room, set in Newcastle in the 1960s and based on the life of pre-teen child killer Mary Bell came out in 2004 and was one of The Guardian's books of the year. Bolstered by a CWA Dagger Award nomination he returned to crime fiction in 2006 with The Mercy Seat, the first in a series featuring troubled investigative journalist Joe Donovan and his team. The second Donovan novel, Bone Machine, has just been released.

He lives, along with his wife, children and collection of 1970s horror films in Hertfordshire and his childhood dreams of playing Doctor Who and scoring the winner for Newcastle United in the FA Cup final remain unfulfilled.