I have a playlist of movie soundtracks, although I do only put it on when I’m editing or have hit a snag and need inspiration. Each time David pulls a new victim out of the water, he fears it’s his estranged fifteen-year-old daughter Lex. Her punishment is to be side-lined to the Marine Policing Unit, or ‘frogmen’, whose main aim is to dredge up dead bodies from the Thames and pass them on to the ‘real’ police. As for the practices themselves, most were justified by jargon and industry speak, the language of which was alien to me when I first took tentative steps into the world of publishing.

As the second publication date slipped by with a severe communication breakdown, it became clear that my riders requested from the outset would not be delivered.Working with an editor wasn’t as painful as it could have been though, and I put that down to working with script editors in the past. I think that’s why I found my way to Michael Crichton when I was too young to really understand what he was writing about. The two form an unlikely partnership in uncovering a particularly nasty case involving drowned girls and drugs.

The handling of the cover was one of several choices that I felt were not in the novel’s best interests. They were well-rounded and nuanced, and didn’t easily fall into the stereotypical ‘cop’ characters that often populate this kind of fiction. The book is written in the third person throughout so we see the police perspectives as well as the criminals. In fact, it was refreshing to find myself feeling more educated, as the book literally dives into the murky depths of the hidden riverways under the City of London.

You saw that truth-to-power narrative playing out on a larger scale with the recent HarperCollins union strikes.

Jon works freelance as a reader and editor for TLC, BFI, and independent production companies with a focus on genre-led storytelling. I graduated in 2011 when there were no jobs to be had thanks to the aftershock of the financial crisis. Refreshingly, we also see the story through the eyes of Naomi, a highly skilled officer who is new to the job. Each time David pulls a new body out of the water, he fears it’s his estranged fifteen-year-old daughter Lex. Posts that have been commissioned will be labelled as sponsored or collaborative based on the brand’s preference.Under his guidance, our titles have picked up numerous awards – including the prestigious Boardman Tasker Prize, the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and the TGO Book of the Year award. It’s one of the UK’s biggest crime scenes in that bodies surfacing is a daily occurrence, but it’s also used to traffic drugs and launder money, traffic people illegally and broker organs. The second is the exact opposite: it’s my way of selfishly purging myself of the whole sorry business. It’s the publisher’s responsibility to disclose their honest misgivings about market position if it factors into their decision.