Graham Bartlett

Graham Bartlett was a UK police officer in Sussex for thirty years.

He mainly policed the city of Brighton and Hove, rising to become its police commander. On the way he was a homicide senior investigating officer and led on managing dangerous offenders, sexual offences, domestic violence, child protection and hate crime. He was a qualified strategic firearms and public order commander, leading the policing of many armed operations, large scale protests and sporting events.

Since retiring, he has become a police procedural and crime advisor helping scores of authors and TV writers (including Peter James, Anthony Horowitz, Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths and Dorothy Koomson) achieve authenticity alongside their drama. He has worked on numerous TV dramas and receives wide praise for his approach to blending his guidance with story and character needs.

He is also a best-selling crime writer, with two non-fiction books – Death Comes Knocking and Babes in the Wood – to his name and his novel Bad for Good (June 2022) introduces the much anticipated Chief Superintendent Jo Howe series.

Courses

Explore courses from Graham Bartlett

With Police Advisor

Protected: Launching January 2024: Graham Bartlett’s Murder Squad

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With Police Advisor

Crime Writing: Character and Dialogue

Get under the skin of a police officer.

With Police Advisor

Crime Writing: Custody And Interviewing

What actually happens after an arrest? And how to write it accurately.

With Police Advisor

Crime Writing: Covert Policing

Weave surveillance and undercover tactics into your crime fiction.

With Police Advisor

Crime Writing: Forensics

Write with confidence about blood, drugs and poison.

With Police Advisor

Crime Writing: Write a Murder

Plan, plot and write the perfect murder investigation.

Publications

Graham Bartlett's Publications

Bad For Good

The murder of a promising footballer, the son of Brighton’s highest-ranking police officer, means Detective Superintendent Jo Howe has a complicated and sensitive case on her hands. The situation becomes yet more desperate following devastating blackmail threats. Howe can trust no one as she tracks the brutal killer in a city balanced on a knife-edge of vigilante action and a police force riven with corruption.

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Babes in the Wood

Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett with Peter James is a fascinating account of what became a thirty-two-year fight for justice.

On 9 October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play on their Brighton estate. They would never return home; their bodies discovered the next day concealed in a local park. This devastating crime rocked the country.

With unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, former senior detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing – a shock result sees Bishop walk free.

Three years later, Graham is working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time, and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes?

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Death Comes Knocking

Whether it’s the murder of a dodgy nightclub owner and his family in Sussex’s worst non-terrorist mass murder or the race to find the abductor of a young girl, tracking down the antique trade’s most notorious ‘knocker boys’ or nailing an audacious ring of forgers, hunting for a cold-blooded killer who executed a surfer or catching a pair who kidnapped a businessman, leaving him severely beaten, to die on a hillside, the authors skilfully evoke the dangerous inside story of policing, the personal toll it takes and the dedication of those who risk their lives to keep the public safe.

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Graham Bartlett was a UK police officer in Sussex for thirty years.

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