Allan Jones

I am writing a series of full-length 'art crime' novels featuring a Welsh police officer, Catrin Sayer. They intend to span the course of her career with the Metropolitan Police Service in London. So far five novels have been published, each a self-contained crime story developing the life and career of the main character from her role as a uniformed officer in Brixton to, by novel five, a detective inspector with the Met's elite Art and Antiques Unit.

Catrin is from Pontypridd, in South Wales. She studied fine art and art history at Aberystwyth University before joining the 'Met' and combines her police career with her art, as best as she can. Now a decorator of 'one-off' ceramics for a gallery in London, she works closely with her friend Jean, a potter in Spitalfields Arts Market. 

The cases cover the principal 'art crime' elements; art theft, smuggling and fraud (with the occasional corpse), but they also deal with issues such as on-line 'hacker' assaults on art students and art as an 'underground currency' for organized crime. Catrin's life also interweaves with that of a woman from Hong Kong, a friend she makes during the first novel set in North Wales, The Chinese Detective.