Alis Hawkins

One of the founders of Crime Cymru, a consortium promoting Welsh crime fiction, Alis Hawkins is the author behind the Teifi Valley Coroner series....

After a childhood growing up on a farm in Ceredigion, Hawkins moved to Oxford to read English and, alongside writing, trained as a speech and language therapist. One of her first steps into publishing was a non-fiction title, The Really Useful ASD Transition Pack , written with Jan Newport in 2003 and aimed at offering support to teachers of children on the autism spectrum.

It was in 2008 that Hawkins published her first novel, Testament . Split over two timelines, it tells the story of 14th-century mason Simon of Kinnerton and his plans to build a grand college, and Damia Miller’s modern-day interest in the building and its origin.

Writing Testament sparked Hawkins’ desire to concentrate on historical fiction and in 2017 the first of the Teifi Valley books was published. Inspired by the Rebecca Riots, None So Blind is set in 1850 and features a London-based barrister, Harry Probert-Lloyd, who has been forced by the loss of his sight to return to his family home in Cardiganshire. Once there he is confronted by the news that human remains have been discovered on a neighbouring property and, with the help of solicitor’s clerk John Davies, begins to investigate. The role of acting coroner soon falls to Harry and he and John work further to ensure justice is served. Their partnership has so far run to four books, two of which have been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Historical Dagger award.

More recently, Hawkins has shifted her attention to the world of Victorian Oxford. A Bitter Remedy was published in 2023 and centres on the mysterious death of a student at Jesus College and the investigation into it by fellow Basil Rice and aspiring polymath Rhiannon Vaughan. The second of the Oxford Mysteries, The Skeleton Army , is due for release in 2024 and will see the duo work together to quell unrest between the Salvation Army and those who oppose them.