The Jackdaw

About Luke Delaney

Luke Delaney joined the Metropolitan Police Service in the late 1980s and his first posting was to an inner city area of South East London notorious for high levels of crime and extreme violence. He was later asked to join the CID where he investigated murders ranging from those committed by fledgling serial killers to gangland assassinations.

Why I wrote Cold Killing, by Luke Delaney...
'I had an unbelievable sixteen years in the Police, the vast majority of which was spent in the CID, and loved every minute of it. But eventually the low pay and difficult working conditions drove me to resign, and I decided to fulfil a lifelong ambition to write a novel. My dad always said the great novelists write about what they know – so it was always going to be a crime novel from me.

With Cold Killing I wanted to write something that accurately portrayed the atmosphere of a murder investigation, while having the scope and pace of a contemporary American crime thriller. I also really wanted the main police protagonist to have a believable dark side that he uses as a tool to help track down the killers he hunts, and so DI Sean Corrigan came to be. Along with his team of detectives, he faces real-life police problems, such as dealing with dilapidated equipment and working from uncomfortable, crowded offices, instead of the high-tech, super-modern places you seen on TV. The book also seeks to show the pressures the detectives are constantly under: from time, their seniors, the media and public. During an investigation, time is always the enemy…'