IAN  JARVIS

Ian was born in the north of England - "oop North" as it's known - in the small mining town of Castleford. For readers under the age of forty, ‘mining’ was the act of digging coal from deep underground to use as a fuel. The town is famous for Rugby League, for being the birthplace of sculptor Henry Moore and After Eight Mints, and for being the possible secret hiding place of the Holy Grail, brought to Castleford from Roswell by the Knights Templar.

 

As a young man, Ian couldn’t make up his mind whether to be a porn star, or a country vicar in the Yorkshire Dales. Fate decided for him. The porn film companies explained he was too good-looking and well-endowed, and the other male actors would become jealous. The Church of England turned him down as he didn’t have something called a 'theology degree' and he didn’t believe in God. As always, petty rules and red tape ruined everything, but Ian joined the Fire Service and the rest, as they say, is geography.

 

He worked for three hectic decades as an operational firefighter with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, and he lives in the wonderful historic city of York, where he writes humorous detective mysteries with a supernatural twist. The novels are set in York and feature the eccentric private investigator Bernie Quist and his teenage assistant Watson.

 

Ian travels regularly, usually though Asia and the Americas, and his interests include walking the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales, natural history, with an emphasis on birds, real ale, and ridding the world of all known evils.

 

He also feels decidedly peculiar speaking in the third person and may have to do this in the future using a sinister ventriloquist's doll.