Bio

Portrait of the author James Oswald as he gazes wistfully into the far distance.
Photograph by Paul Reich

Photo by Bill Waters

OK, so I need to put a little something in here for you curious folk out there. Not curious as in odd, of course. Curious as in the dead cat. Mind you, you may be odd. Probably not dead though.

Who am I? What am I? Do you really care? You do? OK then…

I’m James Oswald, author of some twenty-three published novels and many others that will likely never see the light of day.

Perhaps best known for my Detective Inspector McLean series, set in Edinburgh and following the misadventures of Tony McLean, I have also written three novels featuring Detective Constable Constance Fairchild.

As the cunningly disguised J D Oswald, I am the author of the five part fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, and the standalone gothic/coming of age novel Broken Ghosts.

Links to all of these books can be found in the ‘Books’ section of this website, perhaps unsurprisingly. They are available at all good bookshops, online retailers and also a fair few libraries across the globe.

With my other hat on (and my wellies and raincoat more often than not), I run a 350 acre livestock farm in North East Fife. I used to raise pure bred New Zealand Romney sheep, but the pressure of writing work made that unsustainable. Now I concentrate solely on my pedigree fold of Highland cattle. If I ever get the time, I’ll add farm pages to this website, but for now you’ll find a few videos of them at my youtube channel.


I am represented by Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment, 5-25 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4HJ, United Kingdom. All rights queries should be directed at her. For publicity enquiries, please use the contact form.