Richard
Hilt
Ex-site manager. Professional cynic. Writes the stuff your nan would confiscate.
Thirty years on site.
Now he knocks things down.
Richard Hilt spent the best part of thirty years as a construction project manager, which taught him everything he needs to know about human nature. Mostly that it turns up late, goes over budget and blames the scaffolders.
Born and raised in Liverpool, he grew up on a diet of dark humour, wet weather and people who would rather insult you than admit they like you. On site he learned to read people faster than a set of drawings. The bluffers, the chancers, the quiet ones who would bury you in paperwork. He kept notes on all of them in a battered notebook for years. He insists it was not research. It was.
He has been writing in one form or another for as long as he has been swearing, which is to say since roughly the age of six. He has been published before, but Hard Evidence is his first novel with Fenn & Fable.
Richard writes the way he used to run a site meeting. Blunt, rude and secretly enjoying himself. If you like your crime with a body count, your fantasy with a hangover and your jokes well past the line, pull up a stool.
He would tell you more, but he has got a skip to fill.
Known facts
Hard Evidence
Dirk is a six-hundred-year-old cursed dagger who believes he is the most feared blade in history. He now lives in a paper bag labelled KNIFE (SMALL) in the Gallowmere City Watch evidence locker, the weapon in the murder of Alderman Cuthbert Pryce.
The housemaid found holding him hangs in fourteen days. Dirk knows she did not do it. He just cannot remember who did. With a sleazy codpiece, a furious chastity belt, a teapot that only pours gin and a noose for company, he has a fortnight to fall off enough shelves to solve it.
Exhibits B to E
Exhibit B · Hard hat (dented)
Thirty years of snagging lists. Turns out it was research.
Exhibit C · Pint · Half empty
Reading chapter three aloud. Two people left. Both came back.
Exhibit D · Pen · Borrowed
He will sign anything. Within reason. Mostly.
Exhibit E · Letter opener (allegedly)
Chapter fourteen just happened. He is sorry. He is not.
If you liked these, you’ll like him
Get told first
Release day, the first chapter free and the occasional bit of Dirk that was too rude for the book. One email a month, give or take a launch.