Nick Oldham was born in April 1956 in a house in the tiny village of Belthorn up on the bleak Lancashire moors high above Blackburn. After spending a depressing year working in a bank, he joined Lancashire Constabulary at the age of nineteen in 1975 and served in many operational postings around the county. Most of his service was spent in uniform, but the final ten years were spent as a trainer and a manager in police training. He retired in 2005 at the rank of inspector.

Nick had always fancied being a writer – mainly because he thought that a writer’s lifestyle would suit him (and blame Ian Fleming here, for spending the first few months of each year writing the Bond books in Jamaica). He began writing seriously  in the early 1980’s having some success with short stories, and winning a competition for which the first prize was lunch with his literary hero, Dick Francis. After a few more years of trying – and failing - to get a novel published, Nick eventually found success with A Time for Justice which was to become the first in a series of novels featuring DCI Henry Christie which now stands at twenty books.

He now writes full time and lives on the outskirts of Preston with his partner, Belinda and occasionally gets the chance to write on a beach.