I have been in love with words ever since I realised, at age three, that those squiggles on the page actually meant something. Usually they meant something financial, as my father would listen to me reading only if I chose an extract from the "Financial Times". I edited the school newspaper (is here the place to confess that I was also the author of the section giving all the gossip on who was going out with whom?) and did lots more reading and writing at university (where, of course, I studied English).

I run my own anti-money laundering consultancy, and this gives me plenty of opportunity to write a great deal about my very favourite subject: money laundering. I write a monthly column for trade paper "Money Laundering Bulletin"; I write handbooks to help Money Laundering Reporting Officers; I write policies and procedures for clients; and I have even written a set of adventures for a fictional MLRO called Edward Jones. You may see a theme developing.

In my spare time I can be found haunting the streets of 1820s London, in the company of magistrates' constable Sam Plank. He is the narrator of my series of historical financial crime novels set in consecutive years in the 1820s - just before Victoria came to the throne, and in the policing period after the Bow Street Runners and before the Metropolitan Police.

The fourth Sam Plank novel - "Portraits of Pretence" - was given the "Book of the Year 2017" award by influential book review website Discovering Diamonds. And the fifth - "Faith, Hope and Trickery" - was shortlisted for the Selfies Award 2019.

I am now researching the first in a new series set in Cambridge in the 1820s, narrated by a university constable called Gregory Hardiman.