Alex Gray (author)

Last updated

Alex Gray
AlexGray2007.jpg
Alex Gray (2007)
BornSandra Gray Lang
(1950-05-27) 27 May 1950 (age 73)
Glasgow
Pen nameAlex Gray
OccupationAuthor
NationalityBritish
Genre Crime fiction
Website
www.alexgrayauthor.co.uk

Alex Gray (born 27 May 1950) is a Scottish crime writer. She has published 19 novels, all set around Glasgow and featuring the character of Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer and his psychological profiler Solomon Brightman, the earlier novels being published by Canongate and Allison & Busby and later books by Little Brown. She has also published magazine articles, poetry and short stories as well as stories for BBC radio schools programmes.

Contents

Biography

Alex Gray (born Sandra Gray Lang) [1] [2] was brought up in the Craigbank area of Glasgow and attended Hutchesons' Grammar School. Her father was a telecommunications engineer and her mother, originally from Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, was a telephone exchange operator. She studied English and Philosophy [3] at Strathclyde University and was a founding member of Battlefield Band. [4] She worked for a period in the Department of Health & Social Security, [5] before training as an English teacher. In 1976, she lived in Rhodesia for three months, during which time she married. [6] Thereafter, she continued teaching in Scotland until the 1990s, when she began to write full-time. Gray is a member of the Femmes Fatales crime writing trio, together with Alanna Knight and Lin Anderson. She is the co-founder with Anderson of Bloody Scotland, Scotland's first international crime writing festival, which takes place in Stirling. [2] Gray has two children and two grandchildren; [7] she lives with her husband in Renfrewshire.[ citation needed ]

Gray has published 19 novels in the Lorimer series.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Val McDermid</span> Scottish author

Valarie McDermid, is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill, in a grim sub-genre known as Tartan Noir.

<i>Femme fatale</i> Stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman

A femme fatale, sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battlefield Band</span> Scottish traditional music group

Battlefield Band were a Scottish traditional music group. Founded in Glasgow in 1969, they have released over 30 albums and undergone many changes of lineup. As of 2010, none of the original founders remain in the band.

Catherine Roxburgh Carswell was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, now known as one of the few women to take part in the Scottish Renaissance. Her biography of the Scottish poet Robert Burns aroused controversy, but two earlier novels of hers, set in Edwardian Glasgow, were little noticed until their republication by the feminist publishing house Virago in 1987. Her work is now seen as integral to Scottish women's writing of the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Curran</span> Scottish Labour politician

Margaret Patricia Curran is a Scottish Labour Party politician. She served in the British House of Commons as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow East from 2010 to 2015 and was Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland from 2011 until 2015. She was previously the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Baillieston from 1999 to 2011, and held a number of posts within the Scottish Executive, including Minister for Parliamentary Business, Minister for Social Justice and Minister for Communities.

<i>Poor Things</i> 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray

Poor Things is a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, published in 1992. It won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muriel Gray</span> Scottish journalist

Muriel Janet Gray FRSE is a Scottish author, broadcaster and journalist. She came to public notice as an interviewer on Channel 4's alternative pop-show The Tube, and then appeared as a regular presenter on BBC radio. Gray has written for Time Out, the Sunday Herald and The Guardian, among other publications, as well as publishing successful horror novels. She was the first woman to have been Rector of the University of Edinburgh and is the first female chair of the board of governors at Glasgow School of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denise Mina</span> Scottish crime writer and playwright

Denise Mina is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having written 13 issues of Hellblazer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Welsh</span> British fiction writer and dramatist, born 1965

Louise Welsh is an English-born author of short stories and psychological thrillers, resident in Glasgow, Scotland. She has also written three plays, an opera, edited volumes of prose and poetry, and contributed to journals and anthologies. In 2004, she received the Corine Literature Prize.

Alexandra Sokoloff is an American novelist and screenwriter, and the author of the Thriller award-nominated Huntress/FBI series, following a haunted FBI agent on the hunt for a female serial killer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lin Anderson</span>

Lin (Linda) Anderson is a Tartan Noir crime novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod. As of 2010 the Rhona MacLeod books are being developed for ITV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoë Strachan</span> Scottish novelist and university teacher, born 1975

Zoë Strachan is a Scottish novelist and journalist. She also teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Gorman (writer)</span> American novelist (born 1941)

Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was an American writer and short fiction anthologist. He published in almost every genre, but is best known for his work in the crime, mystery, western, and horror fields. His non-fiction work has been published in such publications as The New York Times and Redbook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen FitzGerald</span> Australian writer

Helen FitzGerald is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel, Dead Lovely, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2007, and The Exit in 2015 by Faber & Faber. Viral was released in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caro Ramsay</span>

Caro Ramsay is a Scottish writer of crime fiction. Her first ten novels are police procedurals, set in Glasgow, featuring DI Colin Anderson and DS Freddie Costello.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Campbell</span> Scottish writer

Karen Campbell is a Scottish writer of contemporary fiction. Her first four novels, while billed as police procedurals, form a quartet set in Glasgow which goes behind the uniform, to examine the lives of people who just happen to be police officers, and feature Sgt. Anna Cameron and Cath and Jamie Worth. Her fifth novel, published in 2013, breaks away from the world of the police. It tells the story of Abdi, a Somali asylum-seeker newly arrived in Glasgow with his young daughter, and of recently widowed Deborah, who has been assigned as mentor to help them settle in. The novel was selected as the BBC Radio Four Book at Bedtime in April 2013. Now published by Canongate, Campbell has written eight novels, the most recent being Paper Cup, which follows the journey of homeless woman Kelly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Megan Abbott</span> American writer (born 1971)

Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. T. Ellison</span> American writer

J. T. Ellison is a New York Times bestselling American author. She writes domestic noir and psychological thrillers, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens. She also pens the "A Brit in the FBI" series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With over a million books in print, Ellison's work has been published in twenty-eight countries and sixteen languages. She is also the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning television series, A Word on Words, which airs on Nashville Public Television. Ellison is also the founder of Two Tales Press, an independent publishing house, and The Wine Vixen, a wine review website. She lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee.

<i>Meantime</i> (book) 2022 novel by Frankie Boyle

Meantime is a 2022 crime fiction novel by the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle. The story follows drug addict Felix McAveety's unfocused investigation into his friend Marina's death. It is set in Glasgow, Scotland, shortly after the 2014 independence referendum. Felix is aided by the crime fiction writer Jane, the left-wing activist Amy and his depressed neighbour Donnie. They meet Chong, who seems to believe reality is simulated, and find signs that British Intelligence are involved in Marina's death.

References

  1. "Battlefield Band". Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. 19 September 2016. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  2. 1 2 Christie, Janet (8 March 2014). "Alex Gray on how ill-health influenced her writing". The Scotsman. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  3. "Alex Gray". Scotland is the Place. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009.
  4. "Sir Billy Connolly joins me in Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame: I'm a founder member of The Battlefield Band". Twitter . 28 September 2017. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  5. "Biography". Archived from the original on 11 May 2010. Retrieved 12 August 2009.
  6. Spowart, Nan (21 October 2021). "Alex Gray: 10 things that changed my life". The National. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  7. McDonald, Sally (20 November 2019). "Meet the author: The Stalker writer Alex Gray". The Sunday Post. Retrieved 28 January 2023.