Boris Starling

Boris Starling (born 1969) is a British novelist, screenwriter and newspaper columnist.

Starling has written seven crime novels under his own name and that of Daniel Blake.

His first book, Messiah, was published in 1999. Notable for its fast pace and high levels of gore, Messiah was a commercial and critical success, reaching both The New York Times and the official UK bestseller lists. It was subsequently adapted for television by the BBC, with Starling taking a cameo role as a murder victim's corpse.

There have been four television sequels broadcast. Messiah I-IV starred Ken Stott in the lead role as DCI Redfern Metcalfe. For Messiah V, Marc Warren took over as DCI Joseph Walker, heading up an entirely new cast. Messiah V was broadcast on BBC1 in January 2008. Starling is listed as series creator of the franchise.

His second book, also a New York Times bestseller, and winner of the W. H. Smith 'Thumping Good Read' Award, was Storm. Set in Aberdeen, Storm begins with a ferry disaster, and follows the subsequent week in the life of Kate Beauchamp, one of the detectives from Messiah, as she tries to find a serial killer while her estranged father heads up the investigation into the ferry sinking.

Starling changed tack substantially with his third novel. Vodka is a sprawling, epic story of Russia immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, and runs several storylines in tandem: the efforts of an American banker, Alice Liddell, to effect the first privatisation in Russian history; the battle between Slav and Chechen gangs for control of Moscow's vodka market; and the hunt for a serial killer who is killing children and draining their blood.

Another shift in period and location came with the publication of Starling's fourth novel, Visibility. Visibility is set in the winter of 1952, when the Great Smog (sometime called the Great Fog) has rolled into London, shutting down most transportation routes and sickening the populace with its noxious haze. Assigned to investigate a suspicious drowning, detective Herbert Smith discovers that the victim, a young biochemist and son of a highly placed government official, had in the hours before his death claimed to be in possession of a discovery that could change the world. Visibility gained good reviews. The Guardian's Maxim Jakubowski called it "mystery at its best", while in the New Statesman Adam LeBor said: "Visibility is an intelligent and thought-provoking book, one that asks lingering questions about the very nature of loyalty and love."

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