[5][6] At age 11, he won a scholarship to Exeter School,[7] where he felt estranged from the other pupils from better-off families and took solace in fiction.
[6] Brooks's debut novel Martyn Pig was published in 2003 by Chicken House, where it was edited by the founder of the company Barry Cunningham, OBE.
They won the next Branford Boase Award "for authors and their editors", which annually recognises an outstanding British novel for young people by a first-time novelist.
[11] The title character Dawn "contemplates killing God, whom she blames for her father's disappearance".
OCLC 458727901 With A Dance of Ghosts in 2011, Brooks began a series of adult private detective thrillers set in a fictional English city.