Name Will Thomas | Role Novelist | |
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Nominations Shamus Award for Best Original P.I. Paperback Books Fatal Enquiry: A Barker, Some Danger Involved, The Limehouse Text: A N, The Black Hand: A Barker, To Kingdom Come: A | ||
Will Thomas, born 1958 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a novelist who writes a Victorian mystery series featuring Cyrus Barker, a Scottish detective or "private enquiry agent," and his Welsh assistant, Thomas Llewelyn. The Barker/Llewelyn novels are set in the 1880s and often feature historical events, people, and movements. Martial combat is a recurring theme throughout this hardboiled series. In interviews, Thomas has said that Barker is based on men such as Richard Francis Burton and Edward William Barton-Wright, founder of Bartitsu.
Prior to writing novels, Will Thomas wrote essays for Sherlock Holmes society publications and lectured on crime fiction of the Victorian era.
Will Thomas' first novel was nominated for a Barry Award and a Shamus Award, and won the 2005 Oklahoma Book Award. He has been employed as a librarian with the Tulsa City-County Library System, and featured on the cover of Library Journal. "The Black Hand" was nominated for a 2009 Shamus Award. "Fatal Enquiry" won the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award.
Will Thomas is a great fan of Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Thomas studies Victorian martial arts such as Bartitsu and Hung Gar, which he uses in his novels.
His wife, Julia Thomas, published her first mystery, The English Boys, in 2016, and has a second coming out in 2017.