About the Author: John Joyce

I wrote my first novel at the age of 25 in response to being a temporarily unemployed marine biologist in the cold and windy town on Lowestoft on the most easterly coast of England in 1976. This gangster novel - THE BEACH RING - was an excellent way for me to vent all my frustrations by creating a series of fictional characters and 'blowing them away' in a series of imaginative ways. Luckily, this novel was never published!

Then my luck changed, I moved to Ireland where I met my wonderful wife Jane and, over Christmas 1980 we embarked on a hair-raising charity mission to Egypt which involved driving an old bus, a broken down ambulance, a decrepit van and a lorry carrying an obsolete printing press across the Alps to the port of Ancona in Italy, which delivered us by ferry to Alexandria. While in Egypt, Jane and I visited the pyramids, and I got the idea for my first published novel - VIRTUALLY MARIA - the first of my 'Virtual Trilogy' of technothrillers - about a grief stricken billionaire on a quest to turn back time so that he can save his beloved wife Maria from being murdered.

This book, along with my three underwater adventures for children in the CAPTAIN COCKLE series, was published by Poolbeg Press and was chosen to be 'Book of the Month' in the Irish bookstore chain Easons, in August 1998.

VIRTUALLY MARIA was followed by A MATTER OF TIME and YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW - in the 'Virtual Trilogy' and were translated into Russian by the Russian publisher ACT.

Then, older, wiser and much better equipped, Jane and I embarked on a very enjoyable research trip for my next novel FIRE & ICE which features a breathtaking chase in the Grand Canyon and a casino scene in Las Vegas. This Cold War thriller, about a rogue Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo and bogus orders from s dissident Russianist breakaway group in Leningrad to attack the US Navy blockade, was published in 2012 and was well received by the critics.

My last novel MASTERPIECE took Jane and I on a trip to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and London on the trail of a plot to steal the Mona Lisa by holding Paris to ransom with a stolen Soviet nuclear weapon. MASTERPIECE is the first of a series of novels featuring former IRA member turned academic Dr. Damien Flynn and crack policewoman Gabrielle Arnault in the EUROPOL specialist team COMMETT and will be followed by my next novel MASTERMIND in 2016.

Following on from my CAPTAIN COCKLE underwater adventures, I've created the character BLACK JOHN THE BOGUS PIRATE who already has his own BLACK JOHN THE BOGUS PIRATE CARTOON WORKBOOK OF MARINE BEASTS and will be following that with a series of illustrated novels for children in the near future.