Leather began writing when he was in college; however, he "never managed to get beyond a few pages,"[9] and did not begin writing full-time until he had worked as a journalist for more than ten years.[8]
His first novel, Pay Off, was written while he was still employed at The Daily Mirror.[8] It was published from the "slush pile" at HarperCollins. The novel is a thriller about a merchant banker who takes revenge on two gangsters who killed his father. The book is set in Scotland, where Leather worked for five years on The Glasgow Herald as a business writer.
His second novel, The Fireman, was written while he was working as the business editor of the South China Morning Post.[9][10] In The Fireman, a British tabloid journalist travels to Hong Kong to discover why his sister committed suicide. Both novels, and his third, Hungry Ghost, were published by HarperCollins.
Leather wrote his fourth novel, The Chinaman, while working as night news editor on the business desk of The Times in London.[8][9] At the time, the Provisional Irish Republican Army's bombing campaign was at its height, and in The Chinaman, a Sino-Vietnamese man loses his family in an attack loosely based on the bombing of the Harrods department store in London. Having been turned away by the authorities, the man, a highly decorated Special Forces fighter in the Vietnam War, travels to Ireland and hunts down the people responsible.[8][11][12] The book was used as the basis for the 2017 thriller The Foreigner.[13]
Published works
Leather's novels frequently include themes of crime, imprisonment, military service, and terrorism. Settings are typically London and the Far East. Leather writes different series in slightly different genres. The main character of one series, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, is a former Special Air Service soldier who becomes an undercover policeman. Another series, Jack Nightingale, is about a former police negotiator who becomes a private investigator;[14] this supernatural detective series is also published by Hodder & Stoughton and includes the books Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade[15] and Lastnight, San Francisco, New York Night, Tennessee Night, The Whisper Man, Witch Hunt, New Orleans Night, Las Vegas Night, Rio Grande Night.
Leather became successful in the Amazon Kindle market in 2010.[19] Amazon UK opened an eBook store that year. As reported in The Guardian, Leather anticipated that people buying eBooks would be seeking bargains, and he priced his books at the minimum price for independent writers in order to get his books into the top ten.[6] He then marketed the books on various forums online.[6]
Early in 2011, Leather's books The Basement, Hard Landing, and the vampire novella Once Bitten occupied the top three places in the UK Kindle bestseller list, a feat matched only by Stieg Larsson with his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.[20] That same year, Leather was the second bestselling UK author on the Kindle worldwide, beaten only by Lee Child.[21][22]
His book Cold Kill was nominated for Best Novel in 2007 by International Thriller Writers Inc.[26] In 2011, Leather sold over 500,000 eBooks[citation needed] and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world.[12]
2012 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival
On 5 August 2012, journalist Nick Cohen wrote in The Observer that Leather had created phony Twitter accounts in the name of another writer, and used those accounts to praise Leather's own books.[27] Cohen quoted Leather's response to a question, as a panelist, at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, which was recorded for BBC Radio 4:[28]
"As soon as my book is out I'm on Facebook and Twitter several times a day talking about it. I'll go on to several forums, the well-known forums, and post there under my name and under various other names and various other characters. You build up this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself."[27]
Leather's comment was widely reported,[29][30][31][32][33] and, on 3 September 2012, forty nine other British authors issued a group statement in which they "unreservedly condemn" the use of sockpuppets, or paid reviews.[34][35][36]
Jeremy Duns and Steve Mosby have alleged that Leather has harassed them online.[37][38]
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