Simon Magorian hails from Southsea and spent years as a bookseller, largely in Independent bookshops, and was a familiar figure on the front desk in Ottokars in Portsmouth. The Voice of the Sea is his first DCI Barclay novel and a follow-up As Cold as Charity will be released in May 2026. He is currently working on the third Barclay novel.
He studied drama, and there is a fleeting sight of him in the closing scene of Derek Jarman’s Edward II. He played the part of the Prosecutor in a public reading of Peter Weiss’s “The Investigation” at the Arcola Theatre in London in 2006. He lives in a rather rundown William IV terraced house near the seafront in Southsea.”