The Bookseller.com

4th July 2009

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£100k for Sunday Telegraph columnist

11.06.08 Benedicte Page

Julia Wisdom at HarperCollins has bought British Commonwealth rights in a period crime trilogy from journalist and reviewer Mark Sanderson, who writes the Sunday Telegraph’s Literary Life column.

The deal was done through Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown, who said that HC “snapped up” the books on the basis of a partial manuscript in a six-figure deal. HC is understood to have paid £100,000 for the trilogy.

The novels are set in 1930s London around Fleet Street and the City, and feature a court reporter, John Steadman, and Matt Turner, a policeman from Snow Hill police station. “The books are based on research Sanderson did into rumours and scandals that came out of that station in the 1930s,” Geller said.

The first novel, with a working title of Snow Hill, is to be published in trade paperback in August 2009, with the other books following at annual intervals.

Media HarperCollins Benedicte Page Books Rights deal Daily Telegraph Mark Sanderson