News about Susan Ward

He was the avuncular man in sensible specs who, at his peak, was a Scottish household name - and the true pioneer of the gritty, murderous genre that is 'tartan noir'. Bill Knox, a journalist from the south side of Glasgow, covered untold crimes, fronted for almost a decade STV's Crime Desk slot appealing for help from the public - always signing off the programme with the promise that any calls to the police 'can be in confidence' - and had abundant contacts in the constabulary. But he was also, for decades, the author of many police procedurals and thrillers, of which the best remembered series follows the Glasgow homicides that entangled the excitable Chief Inspector Thane and his calmer deputy, Moss. Knox used so many pseudonyms for other adventures it is hard to tally them all - Michael Kirk, Noel Webster, Robert MacLeod - but he is now thought to have written 65 books between 1957 and his death, a quarter-century ago, on March 24, 1999.