A BEST-selling crime author is hoping to score a hat-trick of chart-topping novels as he releases his third detective novel.
Dunstable born Adam Croft’s third book Exit Stage Left will be available to download in time for Christmas.
But it is a departure from his previous dark and gritty efforts, Too Close For Comfort and Guilty As Sin, and a return to a more traditional sleuth story.
He told the Gazette: “The first two were more edgy and dark, not the sort of thing you’d let your kids read, but there’s no bad language or anything in this one, it’s a bit more Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle.
“It’s the same genre but different ends of it.”
The book sees amateur detective Kempston Hardwick investigate the mysterious death of TV personality Charlie Sparks.
And Adam, formerly of Langdale Close, admits that writing his latest novel was a different experience to his previous Knight and Culverhouse books.
He said: “The darker stuff is interesting to write. You put yourself in a place that you don’t often go and let yourself loose.
“But there’s a lot more planning that goes into writing something like Exit Stage Left. It’s more stressful but that makes it all the more fulfilling when it’s done.”
Despite the change in tack, former Queensbury student Adam, 25, is hoping Exit Stage Left will achieve the same dizzying success as his previous books which have sold an impressive 120,000 copies between them to date.
As well as having TV producers interested in adapting his previous works and more Knight and Culverhouse and Hardwick tales to tell, Adam is branching out into playwriting in time for 2012.
> For more information on Adam’s books log onto www.adamcroft.net. His book will be available to download from.amazon.com from this month.