John Clarkson

AMONG THIEVES is a reentry into writing novels for John Clarkson. His first crime thriller, AND JUSTICE FOR ONE, was published in 1992, followed by two more in that series: ONE MAN’S LAW in 1994, and ONE WAY OUT in 1996.

John wrote the screenplay adaptation of the first novel for PARAMOUNT PICTURES, and also worked on a first-run syndicated TV series around that time.

The ONE series was followed by two standalone books: NEW LOTS, 1998 and REED’S PROMISE 2001.

All during that time Clarkson worked in advertising as a copywriter, first for several New York agencies, and then running his own advertising agency for many years. After closing his agency, Clarkson began consulting directly with major corporations developing marketing strategies, positioning their brands, developing creative, and managing their advertising agencies.

The advertising and marketing consulting became all-consuming on the creative front, particularly during the seven straight years Clarkson had at least one and sometimes two TV commercials he helped develop running on the Super Bowl.

But even though the advertising work dominated, Clarkson knew he would get back to writing crime- thrillers at some point. It was just a matter of when.

Around 2011, John became interested in the fact that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. With 5% of the world’s population, we have 24% of the world’s prisoners. There are over 2 million people in prison and over 4 million on parole or probation.

How did this happen? What are all those people doing? How do they survive in and out of prison? Out of all this grew the idea of writing a crime novel with ex-cons as the heroes. The result is AMONG THIEVES, which has brought John Clarkson back to writing crime thrillers full time.

John and his wife Ellen divide their time between Brooklyn and upstate New York.