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Fiction from experience Peter Ritchie

Retired Edinburgh and Crime Squad Detective Peter Ritchie, has published his sixth crime thriller. With the help of the IPA Global Writers’ Forum, you too could bring your experiences to a wider audience. M y Career was quite varied and I have to say looking back I wouldn’t have changed a minute. I started as a beat officer in my I try to create her stories on a wide canvas and although she is based in Edinburgh her stories take place all over the place and villains crop up from Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool and so it goes on. The one I’m writing at the moment brings in Dublin and London. I’m not sure what the future brings for the series, but the one I’m doing will be book six in the series and

home town and eventually transferred to CID and loved it from the start. Over the years I progressed through various crime and murder squads including three years on the investigation into the abduction and murder of a number of children in the British Isles. I think this investigation taught me more than any other in my career as I watched the strain take its toll on the senior officers leading the investigation at the time. As I progressed through the ranks, I spent three years in the RCS and that’s where my interest was formed in serious and organised crime. After recovering from a serious accident, I moved to the organised crime unit in NCIS London working with people from all sorts of agencies including the security services. I was already writing by that time but doing nothing with the results. I spent some good years in Europol in Holland and then returned to Edinburgh and the Major Crime Team. I ended up back in London on a project then decided to retire after thirty years that seemed to have flown past. Subsequently, I spent several years on a Public Inquiry in Northern Ireland and that’s where the idea of my central character in the books was formed. I found the history of The Troubles and what I saw myself fascinating and the PSNI detective Grace Macallan took shape in my mind. So, when I started to write the first book, Grace is a Special Branch officer who gets into a difficult situation over a death in custody. She moves to Edinburgh with her life at a low ebb and from there she rebuilds her life and the story develops.

there is a recently published book called Maxine’s Story about a sex worker in Edinburgh. Grace doesn’t feature in this one although some other characters I’ve used in the Macallan series do make an appearance. I like to have a cast of characters because in the job that’s what it’s like. You come across the same people time and time again. As far as possible within the confines of three or four hundred pages I try and make the stories authentic. Of course, that can only go so far and to make it real would be impossible and quite frankly boring. For example, Grace is now a superintendent and occasionally going out to the coal face which is not what that role involves in our modern police world. I do age her though and develop her through the years. I get a great buzz when I hear people have enjoyed her character. That’s what keeps me writing.

POLICE WORLD Vol 65 No.4, 2020

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