David hewson author biography in the back

Best-selling British crime novelist David Hewson talks to Tan May Lee, Janet Tay and Eric Forbes of Quill magazine about crime mysteries, literary fiction, and what he thinks of the Man Booker Prize and Dan Brown

Photographs by Mark Bothwell

BRITISH CRIME NOVELIST David Hewsonwas in Kuala Lumpur recently to promote his sixth and latest novel in his best-selling Nic Costa series of novels set in Rome, The Garden of Evil(Macmillan, 2008). We don’t get foreign writers coming to Malaysia often enough, so we jumped at the opportunity to meet the famous author of crime thrillers. We met Hewson at Marche restaurant, The Curve, in Petaling Jaya, as arranged by Pansing, his distributor in Malaysia and Singapore. “Malaysia is such a vibrant market. There are lots of interesting things going on, which is why they decided to send me out here,” the engaging and personable Hewson told us after we were introduced. He flew into the Malaysian capital the night before and had to leave for Singapore the very next day. Yorkshire-born Hewson lives in Canterbury, Kent.

What is the weirdest thing you’ve done in the name of research?
That’s really easy. For the fifth book in the Nic Costa series, The Seventh Sacrament(Macmillan, 2007), I decided to write about underground Rome, which I didn’t even

•