His series of mysteries, featuring police officers In Rome, led by the young detective and art lover Nic Costa, began with A Season for the Dead, has now been contracted to run to at least nine instalments by British, American, European and Asian publishers.

His second book was set in Spain during Holy Week and won the W H Smith Fresh Talent prize for one of the best first novels of 1996.

Hewson wrote three novels, one based on each part of the tripartite Danish TV series The Killing.

Hewson left school at 17 and joined a local newspaper, the Scarborough Evening News, in the north of England.

In 2009 the sixth Nic Costa novel, The Garden of Evil, won the American Library Association's best genre fiction reading list award for mystery.