David Armstrong

Following a dismal school ‘career’, David eventually read English at Cardiff in the 1970s and then taught in a Shropshire further education college for fifteen years. After a string of rejections and near misses, Night’s Black Agents was published by HarperCollins in 1993, and subsequently short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association ‘Best First Crime Novel’ award. It was described by Philip Oakes in the Literary Review as ‘a tale of crime and punishment that Zola wouldn’t disown…’. David has published a further four crime novels with HarperCollins and Allison & Busby. How Not to Write a Novel, a non-fiction title about the joys (few) and miseries (many) of being a writer, was published by Allison & Busby in 2003 and, perhaps with predictable irony, promptly outsold all the novels put together. He has written features for The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard and Manchester Evening News, gives talks and writing workshops, ‘reads’ for a literary consultancy, and has taught on several Arvon Foundation courses. He has recently adapted Night’s Black Agents for TV and will doubtless have a long wait for its considerable merits to be recognised in that medium. David’s book, A Kind of Acquaintance, was published by Severn House in 2007.