Initially a teacher of English and Drama, John Harvey began writing in 1975, and now has over 100 published books to his credit. The first of his celebrated Charlie Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times as one of the 100 most notable crime novels of the last century. In 2007 he received the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing, and in 2009 he was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Nottingham.

A published poet, John ran Slow Dancer Press for nearly twenty years; in addition, he has written many scripts for television and radio, including dramatisations of novels by Graham Greene and A.S. Byatt and (with Shelley Silas) Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet.

John was one of the original 'Piccadilly Cowboys' and the Herne the Hunter series, was co-written with Laurence James under the name 'John J. McLaglen'.

John Harvey comments: "The qualities I most admire in prose are an uncluttered and spare style and clarity and pace of narrative; hopefully the more successful of my own writing comes close to achieving these things. In the Western I'm interested in finding a balance between the myth of the West (as it comes through American literature and film) and the historical reality. Increasingly, I'm concerned to attempt to make a stronger place for women in the Western, which is traditionally a refuge of masculinity and male fantasy.