What is the title of your latest release?
THE BURIAL PLACE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Retired detective Jake Jackson has to wrestle with troubling issues of belonging and history, and find a killer who is using the past to bring pain in the present. All that, plus some nude swimming.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
This is the third in a series, so I am committed to this wonderful, imaginary corner of the countryside, near Jake's place Little Sky, with its lake and wood and rolling fields. Part of the point of the book is a little hymn to nature, so the setting is one of the main characters.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would. He's a decent bloke, plus he loves reading crime fiction and wants to avoid technology, so we have a lot in common. Not a bad cook either.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Hairy, complicated, kind
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned a lot about history - my dig site was built in the Iron Age and then lasted until the seventeenth century, so there are little moments of the past to savor. I use as an epitaph to the book a lovely quote from an old historian called G M Trevelyan, who wrote about the magic of living somewhere where so many people have come before (it's an underrated part of being British, actually):
“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.”
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I much prefer writing to editing, and so leave the editing to the end.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I have to be careful I don't name some British food that none of your readers will know about. But I like two biscuits (which might be our version of Graham crackers) with chocolate spread slathered between them to make a naughty sandwich.
Describe your writing space/office!
I have three children, who all have desks in our house (even the six-year-old); I, a 45-year-old writer, do not have one at all. So I write where I can: on the train, in bed, on a sofa. Just me, my laptop, and some headphones. One day I would love to have a mahogany desk and a roaring fire and a sea view, but that day is not this day.
Who is an author you admire?
I started writing these books because of my love for crime fiction, so I admire literally hundreds of authors. I'll nominate one living and one dead: Lee Child, who has always been a big supporter and fan of my books; and Dorothy Sayers, who wrote beautifully and compassionately.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Books, plural, changed my life, because they have alway been my greatest comfort and escape. Maybe the Sherlock Holmes stories set me first on the path to crime.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be
published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was supposed to be writing a non-fiction book, and then during the Covid period I started writing Death Under a Little Sky (the first of the series) for joy really, and to give my wife something to read in the bath. I sent it to my agent, who didn't read it for a while in case - she said - it was rubbish, and she'd have to tell me so. One afternoon, she called out of the blue to say that Harper Collins had bought it, and a sequel. I remember walking around my bedroom trying not to cry with pleasure.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love genre novels, and my favorite genre is crime.
What’s your favorite movie?
Tough questions, and I want to say something high-brow and solemn, but it is probably Superbad.
What is your favorite season?
Autumn, for the cold and the frost and the bloody sunsets and the crackle of leaves. Each of my books has a seasonal feel, actually.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By hoping nobody will notice.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I'm not sure these counts, but I'm showing my two eldest children shows that I have always loved, and we are all mesmerized by the brilliance of Veep, which has the perfect combination of human folly, swearing and an explanation of American politics.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I would say Italian - because I would love to live off pasta.
What do you do when you have free time?
I present a breakfast radio show, write novels and have three children, so I would have to say read or sleep (one sometimes sagging into the other).
What can readers expect from you next?
Writing these novels is my greatest passion, and I have already written the next two in the series! So if readers like Jake and Livia and the gang, and want to return to Little Sky, there are definitely more on the way.
Jake Jackson #3
A Novel
Former London detective Jake Jackson finds his new life in the country threatened when an old case from the past buried deep within an archeological dig site resurfaces in this beautiful written and deeply immersive mystery that will challenge your deductive skills.
A beautiful landscape . . .
It began as the project of a lifetime—a group of archaeologists, uncovering the remains of a Roman settlement on a picturesque hill in the glorious English countryside.
A looming threat . . .
But, the idyll is shattered when they begin receiving threatening letters. Former city detective Jake Jackson, now enjoying a quieter life in the local village, is pulled in to investigate.
A killer closing in . . .
Soon, threatening letters are the least of their problems, when a murderer strikes. Now, the race is on for Jake to find the mysterious culprit, before they kill again . . .
Mystery | Thriller Crime [Harper Perennial, On Sale: August 26, 2025, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063463806 / eISBN: 9780063463813]
Stig Abell presents the breakfast show on Times Radio, a station he helped to launch in 2020. Before that he was a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Front Row and was the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. At one time or another he has written for almost every newspaper in Britain, and one or two in America as well.
Stig's book How Britain Really Works was published in 2018 and in November 2020 he released his second book What to Read Next. He has since turned to fiction. Death Under a Little Sky, the first in a new detective series, published with HarperCollins in April 2023.
Stig lives in London with his wife, three children and two independent-minded cats called Boo and Ninja (his children named them, obviously).
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