Lawton worked briefly in London publishing prior to becoming, by the mid-1980s, a documentary television producer at the newly created Channel 4.
[2] Earlier the same year he was named in the Daily Telegraph (London) as one of "50 Crime Writers To Read Before You Die".
Many of the biography pages within Lawton's books have a decidedly tongue-in-cheek bent, with hobbies listed as the "cultivation of the onion and obscure varieties of potato", or "growing leeks".
Defying class and family expectations, the independently wealthy Troy joins Scotland Yard, becoming an investigator on the "murder squad".
The rights to the fourth novel in the series (Riptide) were purchased by Columbia Pictures several years ago.