John Wainwright Books In Order

Publication Order of Charles Ripley Books

Publication Order of Chief Inspector Lennox Books

Publication Order of Inspector Lyle Books

Publication Order of Lewis Books

Publication Order of Sullivan Books

Publication Order of Superintendent Ralph Flensing Books

Publication Order of Superintendent Gillant Books

Publication Order of Superintendent Robert Blayde Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

John Wainwright
Author John William Wainwright, born February 25, 1921 in an area of inner-city south Leeds, called Hunslet. He left school at the age of fifteen to serve as a rear gunner during World War II, after which he was a policeman in Yorkshire.

He joined the West Riding Constabulary as a Police Constable. During his service as a police officer, he went back to studying during his spare time, earning a law degree in 1956.

In the year 1965, he attempted writing a crime novel which was later accepted by the editor of Collins Crime Club, named George Hardinge, and the novel was published as “Death in a Sleeping City”. The very next year, he quit the police force and started writing full-time. In the year 1968, Hardinge became the senior editor at Macmillan Publishers, and took Wainwright’s contract along with him.

His work is from the mystery genre, and sometimes he wrote under the pen name of “Jack Ripley”, publishing four books under this name. He also wrote seven radio plays, short stories (which are mostly uncollected in book format), some non-fiction books, and an indefinite number of newspaper columns and magazine articles.

John cited Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, and Ed McBain as his favorite writers.

He also was a passionate swing music and traditional jazz fan, and some of his books have strong jazz backgrounds, especially in his black comedy called “Do Nothin’ till You Hear from Me”.

The movies “Garde a vue” and “Under Suspicion” are both based off of “Brainwash”, one of John’s most popular novels.

He died at the age of 74 on September 19, 1995 in Blackpool just a few months after “The Life and Times of Christmas Calvert… Assassin”, his final novel, was released.

Since he led a private life, almost never giving interviews and rarely appeared in public, as he enjoyed a steady if not quite great success during his lifetime. As a result, his name is close to forgotten these days, with his death having gone entirely unrecorded by reference books and newspapers until the year 2003. In total, he wrote 83 books, fiction and non-fiction.

“The Worms Must Wait” is the second novel in the “Charles Ripley” series and was released in the year 1967. It was a dead guy, encased within one stalagmite, the petrifying effect of the dripping water held him inside an unyielding and opaque capsule of his own. It gave him a thin icicle-like beard that bridged his chest to chin and a semi-transparent and dark green dunce cap.

Pot-holers found the corpse in a Yorkshire cave. In this strange and colorful setting Superintendent Ripley of the Beechwood Brook Division sets his Murder Headquarters up. The huge resources and cadres of a Northern Police Division are depicted in all of the details of their motivations and activities.

Ripley, who is a cop that’s investigated other crimes, here meets a situation which is gruesome itself, and which isn’t made any easier for him by the involvement of individuals to him in his private life. Superintendent Collins from Hallsworth Hill, his friend, comes to his aid.

“An Urge for Justice” is the second novel in the “Superintendent Robert Blayde” series and was released in the year 1981. In a tiny village in the north of England, an old woman is savagely hanged with some piano wire, and a detective’s search for the murderer reveals, instead, the shocking double—even triple—identity of the victim. Now, the murdered impostor and assassin, linked by horrors long buried with the ashes from the second world war, present one agonizing dilemma in the present day: isn’t punishment the one that fits the crime?

Read on as present and past wickedness is revealed. Dark ghosts continue to haunt the book until the last pages, where there is a horrible and astonishing truth getting brought to light.

This novel is possibly John’s most psychologically brilliant and gripping novel, and proves that John is one of the very best and the master of the police procedural.

“Hangman’s Lane” is the fifth novel in the “Inspector Lyle” series and was released in the year 1992. A cop is suspected of killing his wife. Constable Alex Wardle, while on patrol in a Yorkshire village locates the body of his wife, Tabitha. Her chest was blown away by a shotgun, and she was known to be a nymphomaniac. Even Wardle’s daughter believes he alone had a motive to murder her. So she tells inspector Lyle, who was brought into help with the investigation.

Held back by the sloppy police work and officers’ belief that “no one in Gauntley is even capable of murder”, Lyle interviews some of Tabitha’s potential partners, however he senses the gaps between the few facts of the case are where he is going to locate the killer.

“The Life and Times of Christmas Calvert… Assassin” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1995. It wasn’t that Christmas Calvert enjoyed killing people, he was just incredibly good at it. He is a crack shot, and possessed an unnatural ability to distance himself from his actions and shut down his emotion when he ‘vanished’ his targets.

Calvert’s exceptional shooting abilities brought him to Colonel Dansey’s attention, and when one RAF doctor classified him as ‘remarkably amoral’, Dansey was left without any doubt that he’d found a new recruit for his Button Squad. One elite team of highly trained murderers, The Squad were all RAF personnel but just answered to Dansey and Sergeant Pollard, his second-in-command.

During the early years of World War II, once Calvert joined up in their ranks, the muddier realms of military intelligence sometimes had the reason to call on Dansey’s team for some discreet murdering. Calvert quickly distinguishes himself as a highly reliable ‘vanisher’. Murder quickly takes its toll, even for a natural born killer such as Calvert. Now, fifty years have gone by, and Calvert is an old man, weary with the world’s ways. A guy that has seen much too much deception and too much death.