Leigh
Turner

Leigh Turner grew up in Nigeria, in west Africa; Exeter, in south-west England; and in Roma, Lesotho, where he ran wild on a university campus from ages 6-10 before spending two years in the mist and sunshine of Waterford Kamhlaba School, Swaziland. Later he lived in Manchester, England, before attending Cambridge University.  

In 1979 Leigh hitch-hiked through 27 states of the continental US, an odyssey he is writing as “A Voyage around America”.  

Leigh’s career has taken him around the world, including Moscow, Kyiv, Berlin, Hong Kong, Vladivostok, Miami, St Helena, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Bermuda, Samarkand, Istanbul and Las Vegas.  He started writing in 1986 in Vienna. One night, his girlfriend was late for a date.  While he waited, he had an idea for a story which turned into his first novel. Later, when he lived in Moscow, someone said "write about what you know" and he penned a thriller set in Russia.

Sadly, neither of these novels was published.

In Berlin, Leigh took four years off to look after his two children. An editor at the Financial Times invited him to write about his experiences. You can find the results at his rleighturner.com blog under the "Existential & Women" and "Journalism" categories.

Writing for the FT encouraged him to try a thriller set in Berlin which became BLOOD SUMMIT. He loves reading thrillers, from Lee Child and Michael Connelly through John le Carre to Robert Harris, Stella Rimington and Graham Greene. But he also adores Anthony Trollope, Barbara Atwood and P G Wodehouse.  All these writers have helped inspire Leigh’s new thriller, PALLADIUM, to be published by Immortal Works.