Ed Wood

After a career publishing some of the biggest and best commercial fiction authors, I’m thrilled to take on clients in crime, thriller, mystery and book club fiction – and to be their creative and commercial champion.

For me, a great submission will pair a really punchy concept with an irresistible voice. I’m exclusively interested in adult commercial fiction that is full of twists, turns, gasps and chills. And perhaps the odd tear (happy or sad) too.

As Publishing Director at Little, Brown, I published crime, thriller and book club bestsellers including Mark Billingham, Chris Brookmyre, Carl Hiaasen, Keith Stuart, Jessica Fellowes, Patricia Highsmith, and international megabrands Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler. I published numerous Sunday Times and digital bestsellers, including at number one. Among various awards, my titles won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, various CWA Daggers, and the McIlvanney Prize. And in my second role as Little, Brown IP Director, I worked with authors on original concepts that became huge rights sales hits and international bestsellers. I like to work in creative partnership with authors to fulfil their vision – and then help them reach the biggest readership possible.

I’m a sucker for thrillers generally. Psychological thrillers where nothing is what it seems and there’s a unique idea behind the story – think Gillian McAllistar’s Wrong Place Wrong Time, Frieda McFadden’s The Housemaid or Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True.

Or Groundbreaking thrillers where the mystery is a game played with the reader and genres are blurred: think The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet, Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, or Alex Pavesi’s Eight Detectives. Either way, I want to see a clever concept paired with characters to care about.

There’s also got to be room for remarkable, literary crime writing that can cross boundaries – books like Chris Whitaker’s All the Colours of the Dark and Eliza Clark’s Penance, books that prove the great breadth of what crime novels can be.

And on that loosening of genre, I can definitely be lured towards cross-genre books: the meeting point of horror and thriller; the moment where romance meets horror or thriller; or any other imaginative mash-up, geared around mystery.

I’m dying to find a big book club novel with great writing that makes me fall in love with its characters and come out the other side feeling transformed – and perhaps a little broken-hearted. Some of the best reading experiences I’ve ever had have knocked me for six: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon; The Frequency of Us by Keith Stuart; and going way back, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. And if the book can say something about the world through its characters, like Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus or The Ministry of Time by Kaline Bradley, all the better.

You can send me submissions at [email protected]