Invisible Ink: No 319 Christopher Fowler

A typical example of the late 20th-century midlist author, Christopher Fowler was born in the less attractive part of Greenwich in 1953, the son of a scientist and a legal secretary. He went to a London Guild school, Colfe’s, where, avoiding rugby by hiding in the school library, he was able to begin plagiarising in earnest. He published his first novel, Roofworld, described as “unclassifiable”, while working as an advertising copywriter, a job he described as “one level above sewer-toshing”. He left to form The Creative Partnership, a company that changed the face of film marketing, and spent many years working in film, creating movie posters, tag lines, trailers and documentaries, using his friendship with Jude Law to get into nightclubs.

During this time Fowler achieved several pathetic schoolboy fantasies – releasing an appalling Christmas pop single, becoming a male model, posing as the villain in a Batman comic, creating a stage show, writing rubbish in Hollywood, running a night club, appearing in the Pan Book of Horror and standing in for James Bond. A gifted mimic, he wrote for many British performers including Kenneth Williams, John Cleese, and Michael Caine.

Now the author of more than 40 novels and short story collections, including his award-winning memoir Paperboy and its sequel Film Freak, he writes the Bryant & May mystery novels, recording the adventures of two Golden Age detectives in modern-day London. This ability of turning his hand to most literary forms granted him the honorary title of “Wordslut” and landed him a column in The Independent on Sunday newspaper. The most notable feature of his writing style is a felicity with language that allows for the insertion of cheap jokes. Other works included his War of the Worlds videogame with Sir Patrick Stewart, several peculiar graphic novels and plays of varying quality. His story “The Master Builder” was filmed with Tippi Hedren. Other books included the coming-of-age fantasy Calabash, Faustian satire Spanky, haunted house novel Nyctophobia and the Ballardesque thriller The Sand Men.

In 2015, Fowler won the CWA Dagger In The Library award for his detective series, once described by his former publisher as “unsaleable”. There are 15 Bryant & May books so far, with more to come. He divides his time between London and Barcelona. His columns were notable for nearly always containing the word “peculiar”. Fowler is still alive and has finally realised his ambition is to become a Forgotten Author.