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Richard Allen, the son
of senior officer in the Bristol Fire Brigade, joined the Bristol Constabulary in 1966 as a constable and served with the
Vice Squad, Drug Squad and Special Branch. He was promoted sergeant in 1971, inspector in 1974, chief inspector
in 1981 and superintendent in 1989.
During 1978, Richard had published
Effective Supervision in the Police Service (McGraw-Hill), which was listed as recommended reading by the US Department of
Justice. This was followed in 1986 with the publication of Leading from the Middle (Barry Rose) and recommended
reading for officers attending the Junior and Intermediate Command Courses at the Police Staff College, England.
Between 1988 and 1993, Richard was a visiting speaker
to the Overseas Command Courses at the Police
Staff College and between 1989 and 1994 the principal police lecturer at the Royal Military College of Science Disaster Preparedness
Centre.
Richard retired from the uniformed
service of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary in 1996 and joined the Gloucestershire force as the civilian Head of Training
and Development, until his eventual retirement in December 2002. Richard has an MSc from the University of Glamorgan Business School, is a Fellow of the Charted Institute of Personal
& Development and a Member of the Chartered Management Institute. He is the unpaid co-ordinator of volunteers for the Bristol City Council’s Civil
Contingencies Team and an unpaid assistant instructor with the Avon Centre for Riding for the Disabled.
His first novel, Dirty Business,
was published in November 2005. His second, Die Back, is available now.
Richard is currently writing his third novel entitled Darker than Death.
Dirty Business, first published
in 2005 by Ryan Press (UK) and now available from www.lulu.com in the larger 9” x 6” format, finds Chief Inspector
Mark Faraday taking command of the Bristol Central District just as MI6 move in to conduct a covert and unauthorised surveillance
operation on his district. To make matters worse, Faraday is required to share
his office with the beautiful Helen Cave of MI5. But when one of Faraday’s
best young officers is murdered an intricately woven plot is uncovered involving secret bank accounts and a dissident Irish
terrorist group. From County
Wicklow and the rarefied atmosphere
of an exclusive
London club to Salisbury Plain and the streets of
Bristol,
and against a background of brutal murder and international intrigue, a deadly clock is ticking as Mark Faraday and Helen
Cave race against
time to prevent the nuclear devastation that threatens the West Country.
About Darker
than DEATH, Richard L. Allen’s latest novel, “The death of a respected Bristol artist is written-off
as the unfortunate consequences of an apparently bungled burglary by an unknown opportunist. But, at police
headquarters, Superintendent Mark Faraday is not so easily convinced. As Faraday, with DCI Kay Yin, investigate the death, he begins to uncover a web of betrayal and
dishonesty that stretches from the battlefields of the Great War and an abattoir in the small Belgian village of Boesinghe
in November 1914 to the very heart of present-day British government and the headquarters of the United Nations in New York,
oblivious to the betrayal and dishonesty that stalks him within his own headquarters, where loyalty by many is fleeting and
deceit by some corrupting.”
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