Peter Tonkin

Peter Tonkin is a British author of historical mysteries, maritime adventures and international thrillers. He studied at Queen’s University Belfast, where his teachers included Seamus Heaney, and later spent forty-two years teaching English, history and law. His first novel, Killer, was published in 1978, and he went on to write the thirty-volume Richard Mariner series, following its protagonists through maritime disasters, political crises, terrorism and criminal conspiracies around the world.

Tonkin’s historical fiction ranges from ancient Greece and Rome to Elizabethan England. The Master of Defence mysteries follow swordsman and investigator Tom Musgrave, while the Caesar’s Spies series traces the political and military struggle between Julius Caesar’s assassination and the Battle of Philippi. He has also written the Trojan Murders, set during the events preceding the Trojan War, and the Queen’s Intelligencer series, which places the historical spy Robert Poley amid the Babington Plot, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the death of Christopher Marlowe. His novels combine murder investigations and espionage with detailed accounts of warfare, court politics and intelligence networks.