A Moment With… Paul Gitsham

It’s a pleasure to be welcoming Paul Gitsham and the blog tour for his book, Deadly Truths.

How do you solve a murder when you’re shut out of the investigation?

Young detectives, Robinson Ellington Foxe and Amy Kennard, don’t want to work at Coventry’s Moat Lane police station.  Neither do their colleagues want them there. But it’s the last chance for two officers for whom doing the right thing has cost them their futures.

Despite a murder on their patch, they are lumbered with investigating a series of high-profile burglaries. But when a thief is killed in the house of an influential businessman, Foxe and Kennard are convinced it is linked to their cases and want in.

The official investigation is a whitewash, but Robbie and Amy keep investigating anyway.  As they uncover a web of deceit and corruption, reaching to the very top of the force, their own difficult histories are weaponised against them, and they find themselves fighting for their careers and their lives.

To talk about starting a new series, it’s over to you, Paul. 

The pleasures of a new sandbox to play in.

In 2023, I decided to put my long-running DCI Warren Jones detective series on hiatus (I say hiatus – I haven’t finished him off!). But when one door closes, another opens. Enter Foxe and Kennard in Deadly Truths, the first in a brand-new series.

It’s not that I’ve run out ideas for Warren, far from it, but as many writers will tell you, it’s not the lack of ideas it’s the lack of time to write them. Furthermore, some of those ideas just won’t work within an established series.

Therefore, I decided it was time for a reinvention. Rather than more of the same with different characters, I saw this as an opportunity to rewrite the rules and restart from scratch.

The thing about an established series is that its strengths can also be weaknesses. Building a world that will become familiar to readers and author alike is a wonderful experience. So many successful writers have beloved characters that hook the readers as much as the intricate plots and thrilling action scenes. Warren certainly has his fans.

However, Warren Jones is now a well-defined character. As much as I try to keep my readers guessing, we know what makes him tick. He has evolved over the series – as have his colleagues and friends – but his fundamental beliefs are the same in Web of Lies as they were in The Last Straw. Importantly, we also know what he wouldn’t do.

For the new series, I decided to make entirely different choices right from the start. To build a new sandbox.

First the protagonist. DCI Warren Jones is a middle-aged, experienced detective. As a detective chief inspector, he drives the investigation. He has a rather hands-off detective superintendent above him and a team of colleagues who he directs. Over the series, he earns the respect of his workmates and his peers. At home, he is somewhat unusual in the genre in that he is happily married and doesn’t have any substance-abuse problems. He carries his baggage lightly.

So, what could be more different? How about two junior detectives, right at the bottom of the totem pole? Far from being respected, they are stationed at Coventry’s toxic Moat Lane CID unit because nobody else will have them and nobody else will work at Moat Lane. And what about making them an odd-couple pairing, forced to work together as their colleagues distrust them? Robinson Ellington Foxe is the privately educated heir-presumptive of a family-run hedge fund, who turned his back on high finance to become a Metropolitan Police detective. By contrast, Amy Kennard is a proud, working-class Salford lass, accepted into an elite specialist unit within Greater Manchester Police. Bluntly-spoken, with a pithy turn of phrase, she’s the sort of person you can take anywhere twice – the second time to apologise.

What went wrong in their original forces and how did they wash up in Coventry?

Which brings the second change. The DCI Warren Jones series was set in a fictional North Hertfordshire market town. Creatively that allowed me to give the town everything I needed for the stories set there.

Foxe and Kennard ply their trade in real-world Coventry, a vibrant city in the West Midlands that is curiously under-used in the world of crime fiction. As a Coventry-kid myself, it has been a joy to set a series in my hometown. And whilst I have made some subtle changes to street names etc to avoid lowering the house prices by killing someone there, Coventrians will likely recognise the areas and landmarks. I am forced to search for real-life locations, rather than simply inventing what I need, which I find encourages me to be more creative.

Finally, their position in the pecking order. DCI Warren Jones was basically the boss. By contrast, Foxe and Kennard are shunned by their colleagues and shut out of juicy investigations. When that doesn’t sit well with them, they decide to strike out on their own.

With all that established, I started writing the series, getting to know my new world and new characters. The first in the series, Deadly Truths is out now. Book two, Home Truths is coming November and is available to pre-order. Book three is out next summer. Book four is underway.

I’ve built a new sandbox and I’m having a whale of a time playing in it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

About Paul Gitsham –

Paul Gitsham is the author of the Foxe and Kennard British detective series, the DCI Warren Jones series and the standalone domestic thriller, The Aftermath.

Brought up in Coventry, he started his career as a biologist. After gaining a PhD in molecular biology, he worked in laboratories in Manchester and Toronto, before retraining as a science teacher. Along the way he had spells as the world’s most over-qualified receptionist and spent time working for a major UK bank, ensuring that terrorists, foreign dictators and other international ne’er do wells hadn’t embarrassed the institution by managing to deposit their ill-gotten gains in a Children’s Trust Fund.

Paul’s final school reports from primary school said that he would never achieve anything if his handwriting didn’t improve. A somewhat kinder note urged him to become the next Roald Dahl. If anything, his handwriting has got worse and unless Mr Dahl also wrote police procedurals under a pseudonym, he has failed on both counts.

Paul is a member of the Crime Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers organisation and lives with his wife in the West Midlands in a house with more books than shelf space.

Say hi to Paul via Instagram, Threads, X and Facebook. 

Deadly Truths is book one in the brand new Foxe and Kennard Investigation series and was released in April 2026. Click to buy on Amazon UK and Amazon US. 

by

Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.