MJ (Martin) Lee is a former advertising executive and bestselling author of contemporary, historical and genealogical crime fiction, including the Inspector Danilov, Jayne Sinclair and DI Ridpath series....
Martin Lee was born in Manchester to ‘a very Irish family’ and, apart from a brief spell
as an exchange student in Toulouse, attended grammar school there before going on to study Social Sciences at Bradford University. He has worked as a university researcher in history and as a social worker with Vietnamese refugees, and his 25 years in the advertising industry saw him live and work in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai as a copywriter and creative director. His print and press promotions, TV commercials and short films won several awards.
Lee’s first novel, Death in Shanghai (2015), began a series spanning the late 1920s and early 1930s. These historical thrillers follow Russian sleuth Pyotr Danilov through the tense, intrigue-ridden city under threat of Japanese invasion as he investigates brutal murders including a family massacred in their home and a series of bodies that each hold a message directed at him.
A second series, featuring the family history investigator Jayne Sinclair, was launched with The Irish Inheritance in 2016. A former police detective, Sinclair uncovers historical secrets in the course of her work, which sees her undertaking investigations rooted in events including Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising and War of Independence, the Battle of the Somme and an adoption that occurred in the Second World War. By 2023, ten Sinclair mysteries had been published.
His third series is based in his hometown of Manchester and follows the investigations of DI Thomas Ridpath. Ten years after making a name for himself by catching a serial killer Ridpath’s career is faltering in the first book of the series, Where the Truth Lies (2018), but when a recent murder is linked to his old investigation he races to uncover the connection. Eight further books featuring the detective were to follow.
In addition to his mystery novels, Lee also writes historical fiction under the name Martin Lee, including The Fall (2017) about the men of the Manchester Regiment caught up in the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942.
Extraordinarily prolific, MJ Lee now divides his time between the UK and Asia, raising his daughter, researching his family history, and ‘single-handedly solving the problem of the French wine lake’.
