Christopher Fowler would make a good serial killer. He's charming and English and lives in a white penthouse with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, and you'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth until you read his dark urban fiction — 17 novels and over 120 short stories so far. His œuvre divides into black comedy, horror, mystery, the odd revolting death and a set of novels unclassifiable enough to have publishers tearing their hair out. Emerging from a film industry background, he has come painfully close to having movies made of his novels Roofworld, Spanky, Psychoville and Calabash, but oddly it was his short story “The Master Builder” that became a film called Through the Eyes of a Killer, starring Tippi Hedren and Marg Helgenberger. He is currently writing the ‘Bryant & May’ mysteries, featuring two elderly, argumentative detectives, but his latest book, Paperboy is autobiographical. His graphic novel for DC Comics was the critically acclaimed Menz Insana. He also achieved three pathetic schoolboy fantasies, releasing a pop single, being used as the model for a Batman villain, and acting as a stand-in for James Bond.