Simon Toyne

Simon Toyne is the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, and The Tower. A writer, director, and producer in British television for twenty years, he worked on several award-winning shows, one of which won a BAFTA. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and published in more than fifty countries. He lives with his wife and family in England and the south of France, where he is at work on his second Solomon Creed novel.

Toyne's latest novel is The Searcher, the first novel in the Solomon Creed series.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

I always have a bunch of things on the go at any one time. My current crop includes They All Love Jack by Bruce Robinson, Stolen by Daniel Palmer, and The Son by Philipp Meyer.

They All Love Jack is a glorious bare-back ride of a book through the deepest depravities of Victorian England and the thick London fog of the Jack the Ripper legend. Bruce Robinson wrote the Oscar nominated script for The Killing Fields and also wrote and directed Withnail and I, amongst others, and this book has the same furious energy in the language as that. It’s a Quixotic book, not a novel, not really a chronological dissection of the case, and the windmill Robinson tilts at are the monarchy, the aristocracy, the Freemasons and the establishment in general. It’s glorious and I urge everyone not to be put off by its 800 plus pages, I’m 300 pages in and am already fearful that I’m reading it too fast.

Stolen is a great, old-school, Hitchcock-ian style thriller about a guy who steals the cyber identity of someone in order to make use of his medical insurance to get meds for his cancer stricken wife. He picks the wrong guy and things spiral out of control. Daniel is a great, no-nonsense, skilled craftsman when it comes to these things and I love reading his books. They’re always like going on a rollercoaster ride and this one is proving to be no exception.

The Son is a sprawling epic tracing several generations of a Texas dynasty, from a teenage boy being taken and raised by Indians to his oil baron great-great-granddaughter watching the blood line slowly dwindle away to dust. It’s beautifully written and properly sweeping in scope and I don’t want that to end either.

Visit Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

--Marshal Zeringue