About
JOHN WORSLEY SIMPSON
The novels are being reissued by Muse It Up Publishing, Montreal, as e-books with new editing and titles The first three are now available. The best way to buy these is through Amazon.
For the last eight years of my journalism career, I was an editor with the Bloomberg news service in the Toronto bureau.
My career has included positions as a reporter and/or editor at various major Canadian newspapers, including The Globe and Mail Report on Business, The Financial Post, and Montreal Gazette. I’ve also worked in London as a sub-editor with The Times and as an editor with Bloomberg.
I am JOHN WORSLEY SIMPSON and I was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, emigrated to Canada at the age of five. I grew up in Toronto.
I've been a journalist for many years, and I’ve stepped away from journalism to concentrate on writing fiction.
My first novel, Undercut, was runner-up to Kathy Reichs’s Déjà Dead, as the best first novel in the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis awards in 1997: Undercut, Counterpoint, Shadowmen and A Debt of Death, all crime fiction, were published by Mercury Press, Toronto.
The Emerson Ruby Murder: Death in the Dales
The Emerson brooch with its Two-million-pound Ruby is put on the public display once a year at the annual soiree held by the lord and lady of a stately home on the Yorkshire Dales. The brooch is stolen in a deadly robbery and the company that insures it hires private detective Harry Stark to track down the schedule and to determine whether the robbery was real or staged. Stark finds that almost nothing he encounters in the investigation is what it seems to be and much of what is represented as fact is fiction.
STARK CHOICE (2017)
It is the heat of summer in downtown Toronto, and Homicide Detective Harry Stark is called in to investigate the murder of a jewel courier who was formerly a soldier in the Israeli army.
At the same time, a copycat murder of a young woman is being looked into by Stark’s lover, Carol. This whodunit provides a gritty, realistic picture of Toronto and its downtown and east-end denizens.
STARK SHADOWS (2017)
Young, successful men with unblemished reputations— each of them living a contented, “normal” life— are being murdered, one month apart.
The killings seem to be unconnected, but are they? Are there dark secrets in the dead men’s pasts?
Homicide Detective Harry Stark has to untangle the mystery of the links among these men in a case that takes him and his partner, Noel Harris, on a tortuous and deadly trip into the world of shadows.
DEATH NEVER SAYS GOODBYE
Death and deception. This book is about the cutthroat world of the pharmaceutical industry, where being first on the market can mean billions in profit, and staying alone in the lead, billions more.
With corrupt officials and the Russian mob as partners, stakes get higher and methods more deadly. Former U.S. Navy SEAL Liam gets caught in a morass of drug-industry intrigue after a whirlwind marriage to Rebecca, who vanishes from sight.
Was she the victim of kidnapping, or is Liam the victim of a cruel and evil hoax?
Latest Posts By
JOHN WORSLEY SIMPSON
Reviews
WHAT PEOPLE SAY...
UNDERCUT
MARGARET CANNON, Globe and Mail
One of the best in the excellent Mercury Midnight Original series. What makes this a standout are the characters. The plot blazes like a house afire.
UNDERCUT
JOHN NORTH, Toronto Star:
Simpson’s crafty plotting, together with his easy command of the book’s characters and Toronto locales, makes this a must read. This has all the hallmarks of an enduring series.
COUNTERPOINT
ANNA ASIMAKOPULOS, Montreal Gazette:
John Worsley Simpson takes us to a hot summer in Toronto. The body of a 78-year-old jewel courier is found, stabbed, in an office building. Homicide detective Harry Stark is called in. As Stark begins to dig into the victim’s life, he runs into his old nemesis, Sal Martineri, a slippery criminal Stark has never been able to pin anything on. Counterpoint is Simpson’s second murder mystery. With it, he proves he is a new Canadian writer worth watching
SHADOWMEN
MARGARET CANNON, Globe and Mail:
The third novel by Toronto author Simpson, is his best. Corbett Chesley is running near Toronto’s High Park when he’s run down by a driver who stops, not to get help, but to make certain Chesley is dead. There’s no evidence to lead the police but when another man is killed, Homicide Detective Harry Stark begins to see a pattern. Young men with no enemies and great expectations are being killed one month apart. There are no obvious links between victims and that’s when Stark and his partner have to uncover a serial killer.
