Streets of .... London with Barry Faulkner's DCS Palmer series

DCS Palmer of the Met is a Londoner. Born in S London his Met career started on the East End beat in the 60’s and then as a young CID constable fighting the organised crime gangs of the Krays and Richardson’s amongst others and progressed to now, where as head of the Serial Murder Squad he fights retirement as hard as he fights crime. Sometimes in a current case an old adversary from the early days pops up.

Not one to pull punches or give a hoot for political correctness if it hinders his inquiries Palmer has gone as far as he will go in the Met. and he knows it. Master of the one line put down and slave to his sciatica  he can be as nasty or as nice as he likes.  

The mid 1990’s was a time of re-awakening for Palmer as the Information Technology

East End

revolution turned forensic science, communication and information gathering skills upside down. Realising the value of this revolution to crime solving Palmer co-opted Detective Sergeant Gheeta Singh, a British Asian WPC onto his team. DS Singh has a degree in IT and was given the go ahead to update Palmer’s IT with all the computer hard and software she needed to do the job. Most of which she wrote herself and some of which is, shall we say, of a grey area when it comes to privacy laws and accessing certain restricted databases!

Dulwich

On the personal front Palmer has been married to his ‘princess’, or Mrs P. as she is known to everybody for nearly thirty years . The romance blossomed after the young DC Palmer arrested most of her family who were a bunch of South London petty villains in the 1960’s. They have four children and eight grandchildren, a nice house in Dulwich and a faithful dog called Daisy who Palmer dotes on. They also have a neighbour called Benji who Palmer doesn’t dote on. Benji is a gay retired advertising executive in his late 50’s with a big pension and nothing to do with it except take Cruises round the world and top up his fake tan. He has also taken over the mantle of the local WI ladies favourite from Palmer since arriving in the area.

Gheeta Singh lives alone in a fourth floor Barbican apartment having arrived on these

Barbican apartments

shores as part of a refugee family fleeing from Idi Amin’s Uganda. Her father and brothers have built up a good computer parts supply company in which it was assumed Gheeta would take an active role on graduating from University. She had other ideas on this, and also on the arranged marriage her mother and aunts still try to coerce her into. Gheeta has two loves, police work and technology, and thanks to Palmer she has her dream job.

Combining the old ‘coppers nose’ and ‘gut feelings’ of Palmer with the modern IT skills of DS Singh the two make an unlikely but successful team. The books have been described as ‘NCIS meets the Sweeney’ which seems to sum them up well.

Barry Faulkners Amazon page

THE AUTHOR

Faulkner was born into a family of petty criminals in Herne Hill, South London, his father, uncle and elder brothers running with the notorious Richardson gang in the 60s-80s, and at this point we must point out that he did not follow in that family tradition although the characters he met and their escapades he witnessed have added a certain authenticity to his books. He attended the first ever comprehensive school in the UK, William Penn in Peckham and East Dulwich, where he attained no academic qualifications other than GCE ‘O’ level in Art and English and a Prefect’s badge (though some say he stole that!) 
His mother was a fashion model and had great theatrical aspirations for young Faulkner and pushed him into auditioning for the Morley Academy of Dramatic Art at the Elephant and Castle, where he was soon asked to leave as no visible talent had surfaced. Mind you, during his time at the Academy he was called to audition for the National Youth Theatre by Trevor Nunn – fifty years later, he’s still waiting for the call back!
His early writing career was as a copywriter with the major US advertising agency Erwin Wasey Ruthrauff & Ryan in Paddington during which time he got lucky with some light entertainment scripts sent to the BBC and Independent Television and became a script editor and writer on a freelance basis. He worked on most of the LE shows of the 1980-90s and as personal writer to Bob Monkhouse, Tom O’Connor and others. During that period, while living out of a suitcase in UK hotels for a lot of the time, he filled many notebooks with DCS Palmer case plots and in 2015 he finally found time to start putting them in order and into book form. Eight are finished and published so far, with more to come.

Faulkner is a member of ALLI (Alliance of Independent Authors) and publishes a blog about the ‘geezers’ of his youth, the criminals and their heists. It goes in depth about the Krays, Brinks Mat, ‘Nipper’ Read and all the other major heists and who ‘dun ‘em’.  Take a look at  geezers2016@wordpress.

He also speaks about that era in illustrated talks for social clubs, WI and others.

As a crime writer Faulkner is quite particular about ‘getting it right’ and as well as his own Barry Faulkner Facebook page he publishes a page called ‘UK Crime Readers and Writers Page’ which has much information about the forensic crime detection methods, police procedurals and other facts of use to both reader and writer of crime and detective books.

Faulkner is a popular speaker and often to be found on Crime Panels at Literary Festivals which he embraces and supports wholeheartedly.

He can be seen on TV crime programmes including C5’s UK Narcos series on the London Crime Gang Adams Family episode giving an insight to their motivation and methods. (series now on C5 catch up) His book ‘I’m With The Band’ has been serialised on BBC Radio Bristol in 19 parts.

Faulkner is booked for The Hawkesbury Upton Lit Festival, Bristol Crime Festival and Evesham Festival of books locally amongst others.

Faulkner has 6 children, 14 grandchildren a few hundred great grand children and now lives in the glorious Forest of Dean with his wife and three dogs! ;-).