William Ryan

William Ryan was born in London in 1965 and educated largely in Ireland, where his family come from. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he practised briefly as a barrister in London before becoming an in-house banking lawyer specialising in trading. In his spare time, he wrote on an occasional basis for television and film before deciding to take writing more seriously. To this end, he completed a Masters in Creative Writing at St Andrews University in 2005, where his tutors included the poets Douglas Dunn and Don Patterson and the novelists John Burnside and A. L. Kennedy.

In 2006 his debut short story 'Denmark' was published in COOL BRITANNIA, a collection of short fiction edited by A. L. Kennedy and published in Germany. His debut novel, THE HOLY THIEF, is the first in a series of cases and adventures for Alexei Korolev, a detective working for the Moscow Criminal Investigation Division in 1930s Russia. This and two further Korolev novels will be published by Macmillan in the UK, St Martin's Press in the US, Heyne in Germany and Editions des Deux Terres in France.

William is married and lives in West London.

Author photo © Charlie MacDonnell