CMP freelance journalism course graduate, Phil Hilton, started 2016 in style by publishing two books on Amazon Kindle.
They are crime thrillers focused on a notorious character called Harry Royle, who is based on someone close to Phil’s heart: his father, who was once Britain’s most wanted man.
One book is called A question of honour, and the other is A code of conduct. They both include a tribute to CMP principal Cleland Thom, who Phil says turned him “from a dreamer into a writer”.
Said Phil, who graduated from our online freelance journalism course in 2010: “Harry Royle didn’t simply spring fully formed from my imagination, he is in fact based on a real person.
“The man behind the fiction is my late father. He was the classic wronged man, who having made a mistake turned to a life of crime and in the process became a notorious jailbreaker.”
Phil added: “In 1951, he was Britain’s most wanted man, having escaped from Dartmoor prison. His face made the front pages of the national press. In 1954, his story was serialised in the Sunday People. He was picked up from the gates of Dartmoor by the most famous crime reporter of the time, Duncan Webb.
“Harry Royle as a character is not intended to make a hero from a criminal, but to show how different, things could have been, if another path had been taken. It is my tribute to the man behind the headlines.”
Phil is working on the third book in the series and a collection of short stories for release in the spring.
A question of honour is set in 1937. Sergeant Harry Royle, on the eve of becoming an officer, is framed for murder and forced to run. Royle forced in to hiding, friendless and lost, as hunted, he runs from place to place.
His journey which eventually takes him to the brutal streets of London’s gangland Soho, where he finds friendship, comrades and a hope of redemption, in the twilight world of smoky jazz clubs and those who live in the shadows.
Harry’s story is told against a backdrop of wartime cities, daring prison escapes and stolen moments of happiness. It is one man’s truth and his battles with an unjust world, a world populated by those who live by their own rules and who would stop at nothing to keep him locked away and his true story untold.
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