R. J. Mitchell

ROBERT JAMES MITCHELL was brought up in Stirling where he attended Riverside Primary school between 1972 and 1979 before moving onto Wallace High School.

Having developed a keen interest in history from an early age, especially medieval history, Mitchell regularly corresponded with the great Scottish historical novelist Nigel Tranter during his teenage years in the mid-eighties.

Mitchell graduated MA Honours in British, European and Scottish Medieval History from Glasgow University in July 1989 and joined Strathclyde Police, on July 31, 1989.

Mitchell was initially posted to the former ‘D’ Division, or the North, as it was known to all those who served in it and the author still cherishes his first set of shoulder numerals which were D325.

After 12 years Police Service in a 'variety' of roles Mitchell left to become a sports journalist where during a 13 year period he worked for the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, The Glasgow Evening Times and The Scotsman.

It was in 2008, while recovering from an appendicitis, that Mitchell decided to write the first draft of ‘Parallel Lines: The Glasgow Supremacy‘, a crime thriller set in Glasgow in the recent past, drawing heavily on his own experiences and featuring the characters of Detective Sergeant Gus Thoroughgood and DC Kenny Hardie.

After a myriad of rejections the novel was published in spring 2011, by the Strategic Book Group, New York. In July, 2011, the ebook of the same novel was published by Fledgling Press of Edinburgh, for whom it is the top selling ebook.

In January, 2012, RJ Mitchell signed a contract with Fledgling for full rights to the follow up entitled ‘The Hurting: The Glasgow Terror’ which was published in all formats in July 2012.

The novel, which centres around a terrorist attack on Glasgow has since proven tragically prophetic in terms of the Paris atrocities and returned into the Scottish crime Ebook best sellers in December 2015.

In November 2013 the third in the Thoroughgood trilogy, The Longest Shadow was published in all formats by Fledgling Press, to critical acclaim, when it was made Radio Clyde Book of the Month.

In November 2014, Fledgling Press secured the paperback rights to Parallel Lines and the book was subsequently re-launched in the UK and has now become Mitchell's best selling paperback title.

In the summer of 2015, after much soul searching, RJ Mitchell decided to part company with Fledgling Press and subsequently signed a deal with respected English independent publishers McNidder&Grace.

On June 23, 2016 the Thoroughgood prequel, The Shift, set in 1989 and heavily based on Mitchell's miserable two year spell as a rookie probationary cop in the North of Glasgow, interwoven with a fictionalised account of the Ice Cream Wars and the Northern Ireland troubles spilling over into Glasgow, launched.

The DS Thoroughgood series has become a staple for Mitchell and has seen him nominated for awards regularly. The keen interest in Mitchell’s gritty, mature, seasoned approach to writing crime thrillers saw ‘The Shift’, nominated for The People’s Book Prize in 2017, despite polling in excess of 11,000 votes UK wide the 1989 set prequel finished runner-up.

The Shift has confirmed Mitchell's ability to write exceptionally gritty and realistic crime fiction, filled with colourful and believable characters within in an action driven plot, the pace of which is relentless.

First published in 2011, ‘Parallel Lines’ and its hero DS Thoroughgood have withstood the test of time, with the book and its sequels ‘The Hurting’ and ‘The Longest Shadow’ receiving new editions in 2020 thanks to the respected Manchester publishing house, Matthew James Publishing, with whom Mitchell is now collaborating.

In 2017 RJ Mitchell also completed the first book in a new stand alone series about a new anti-hero, disgraced ex-SAS soldier Ludovic Fear entitled 'The Shadow of Fear', in which the action rages across Europe and Scotland.

This novel was released in 2018 to critical acclaim.

A prolific and committed writer, Mitchell’s work has seen him become a well - respected name in the crime fiction community. This popularity has been met with significant sales as well as UK-wide tours supported by WH Smith.

Mitchell’s Scottish tours in promotion of his last three thrillers ‘The Shift’ (2017), ‘The Shadow of Fear’ (2018) and Thoroughgood V, ‘The Blood Acre’ (2019), have achieved sales of 1000 books plus on each Odyssey with the high street retailer.

In particular Mitchell’s 2019 tour with WH Smith in support of 'The Shadow of Fear' set a record of 1389 sales for Smiths, which is the highest tour sales figure enjoyed by the retailer in Scotland this century.

The sixth outing in the DS Thoroughgood series, 'The Hammer’ which follows on from ‘The Blood Acre’, is set in 1990 and sees Gus Thoroughgood head for Manchester in pursuit of a notorious Glasgow criminal only to become involved in a deadly drugs turf war and blood feud, was released in September 2022.

Mitchell backed this up with another successful WH Smith Scottish tour.

Currently RJ Mitchell is working on a World War II novel entitled 'Operation Parsifal', which is uniquely written from the German perspective and is based on the premise Hitler did not die in the bunker.