Susan Grossey
ALLi Author Member
Location: United Kingdom
Genres: General Fiction, Crime, Other, Historical Fiction, Business
My name is Susan Grossey. I graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a degree in English, and then taught secondary English for two years before realising that the National Curriculum was designed primarily to extinguish every spark of creativity in its teachers. I then became a technical author, and reached the pinnacle of this profession when I was asked to document the workings of a choc-ice wrapping machine in Cardiff, while wearing a fetching blue hairnet (which I forgot to remove until it was pointed out by a cashier in a petrol station on the M4). From this unbeatable high point I moved into technical training, and one day was asked to help with a staff manual on fraud prevention. As I wrote the chapter on money laundering, I realised that here was a topic that could keep my interest for years – and so it has proved. Since 1998, I have been self-employed as an anti-money laundering consultant, providing training and strategic advice and writing policies and procedures for clients in many countries. As part of my job, I have written (and self-published) several non-fiction books with exciting titles like “Money Laundering: A Training Strategy”, “The Money Laundering Officer’s Practical Handbook” and “Anti-Money Laundering: A Guide for the Non-Executive Director”. However, even this is not enough financial crime for me, and in my spare evenings and weekends I write fiction – but always with financial crime at the heart of it. This is my beloved Sam Plank series, set in 1820s London and narrated by magistrates' constable Samuel Plank. And yes, self-published again, because traditional publishers told me that no-one's interested in financial crime. Tell that to Bernie Madoff,
Susan Grossey's books
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
With the University preparing for Michaelmas term in 1827, Cambridge is alive with promises of fortunes to be made. University constable Gregory Hardiman has neither the appetite nor the funds to invest, but many others are tempted by the gleam of Bolivian silver. On patrol one evening Gregory is called to a violent incident at an inn, and before long his enquiries lead him to several of the town’s best-known figures – including the Master of St Clement’s College. Struggling to make sense of what he has learned, Gregory himself is targeted as someone threatens to blackmail him. And with a chance of happiness once again within his grasp, can he risk losing it all if his past is revealed?
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In Cambridge in the late Regency, Gregory Hardiman is learning the ropes as a university constable. But his quiet life is about to be disrupted by the gentlemanly sport of horse-racing and the lengths people will go to to win... * Shortlisted for the SELFIES BOOK AWARD 2025 * In the spring of 1826, ex-soldier Gregory Hardiman is settling in to civilian life as an ostler and university constable in Cambridge. When an undergraduate is found hanged in his rooms at St Clement’s College, the Master asks Gregory to find out what could have driven the seemingly happy young man to take such a drastic step. A second death at the same college suggests something altogether more sinister, and Gregory sets out to discover whether a love of illegal gambling on horse races could lie at the heart of the tragedies. In the second of the Cambridge Hardiman Mysteries, Gregory...
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
It’s the late Regency period in Cambridge, and fine wines and precious artworks are disappearing from St Clement’s College. But just who is responsible, and how far will they go to keep their secret? * Shortlisted for the SELFIES BOOK AWARD 2024 * Cambridge of the 1820s is not all lectures and prayers, as university constable Gregory Hardiman discovers in the pages of this intriguing Regency crime novel. After the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars, ex-soldier Gregory Hardiman is enjoying the quiet life of an ostler at a Cambridge coaching inn. But when the inn’s cook is found drowned in the river in the spring of 1825 and his distraught widow pleads for help, Gregory finds himself caught up in the unexpectedly murky world of college life in the town. He navigates uneasily between the public world of the coaching inn and the hidden life behind the high walls of...
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Regency London is not all romance, society balls and dashing dukes - and magistrates' constable Sam Plank is more than aware of it. In the autumn of 1829, the body of a wealthy young man is found dumped in a dust-pit behind one of London's most exciting new venues. Constable Sam Plank's enquiries lead him from horse auctions to houses of correction, and from the rarefied atmosphere of the Bank of England to the German-speaking streets of Whitechapel. And when he comes face to face with an old foe, he finds himself considering shocking compromises... The new and highly organised Metropolitan Police are taking to the streets, calling into question the future of the magistrates' constables. Sam's junior constable, William Wilson, is keen, but what is an old campaigner like Sam to do when faced with the new force and its little black book of instructions?
Genres: Essays
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In August 2006 the editor of the Cambridge Evening News agreed to take me on for six months to write a weekly column called “Susan in the City”. His brief for me was this: “I am looking for a female columnist who can write bright, witty, fun, entertaining, off-the-wall, zany, I’ve done that, I’ve thought that, that’s happened to me, ludicrous, pithy, thought-provoking and occasionally controversial stuff.” The six month trial stretched into ten and a half years, outlasting three editors and one name change to the Cambridge News, and producing five hundred and ten columns. This book contains my eighty favourite columns from my reign as “Susan in the City”.
Genres: Business
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In today’s gig economy of portfolio careers and side hustles, more and more of us are working alone for at least some of our lives. We are the self-employed, the freelancers, the independent consultants and the one-man bands. Responsible for every aspect of our own professional lives, we need at least eight arms to keep the show on the road – we are the solo squids. But although you can work alone, you may not know how to enjoy it. This book is about how to be a happy solo squid – how to run your business on your own and thrive on the experience. It is not a book about how to set up a one-person business, and it is especially not a book about how to expand that business to take on armies of staff and portfolios of premises. Staying solo does not mean that you are not...
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In the sixth Sam Plank mystery, a young man returns to London from the family plantation in the Caribbean after an absence of six years to be at his father’s deathbed – and to inherit his estate. But is the new arrival who he says he is, or an impostor? Anyone who doubts his identity seems to meet an untimely end, but his sister swears that he is her beloved brother. With their investigations leading them into the complicated world of inheritance law and due process after death, Constable Sam Plank and his loyal lieutenant William Wilson come face to face with the death trade and those who profit from it – legally or otherwise. Among them is an old enemy who has used his cunning and ruthlessness to rise through the ranks of London’s criminal world. And it’s now 1829: as plans progress for a new police force for...
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In the fifth Sam Plank mystery, Rose Welford, the wife of a bootmaker, is smothered in her bed in the summer of 1828. Her husband quickly confesses to the crime, claiming that a message from beyond the grave told him to do it. At ever more popular gatherings in fields, factories and fine houses, a charismatic preacher with a history of religious offences seems to be at the heart of it all – but who, and what, can be believed when fortunes are at stake? Constable Sam Plank is drawn into matters beyond his understanding when his wife Martha hears a message of her own and his junior constable Wilson makes a momentous choice.
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
* Awarded BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 by influential book review website Discovering Diamonds * In the fourth Sam Plank mystery, an elderly French artist is found dead in his rooms in London clutching a miniature portrait of a little girl. Intrigued, Constable Sam Plank delves into the world of art dealing and finds himself navigating the fragile post-war relationship between England and France. What is the link between this and the recent attacks on customs officers in London Docks? And will a beautiful mademoiselle put paid to Martha Plank’s matchmaking? In this novel, set in the chilly spring of 1827, Plank and his junior constable William Wilson meet Frenchmen in London and daring blockademen in Kent to uncover smuggling and even more dangerous ambitions.
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In the third Sam Plank mystery, in the stifling summer of 1826, the death of a young man in Hyde Park uncovers a web of blackmail and corruption so far-reaching that even the redoubtable Constable Sam Plank is shocked. A Quaker charity hides a terrible secret, a dangerous enmity is growing between London’s hackney carriage drivers and its watermen, and fraternal loyalty is tested to its limits. This book plunges the magistrates’ constable, his determined wife Martha and his protégé William Wilson into a dark and desperate world.
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In the second Sam Plank mystery, Constable Sam Plank suspects there may be a link between a suicide, an embezzler, an arsonist and a thief. No corner of Regency London is untouched by these crimes, as he travels from the mansions of St James’s back to his own childhood haunts among the dank alleyways of Wapping. As his steadfast wife becomes involved in his investigations, and with a keen young police officer now under his command, Sam finds himself leading them all into a confrontation with some ruthless and brutal adversaries – one of whom he had hoped never to see again.
Genres: Crime
Formats: E-Book, Audio, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In the first Sam Plank mystery, it is 1824, and trust in the virtual money of the day – new paper financial instruments – is so fragile that anyone forging them is sent to the scaffold. So why would one of London’s most respected bankers start forging his clients’ signatures? Sent to arrest Henry Fauntleroy, Constable Samuel Plank is determined to find out why the banker has risked his reputation, his banking house and his neck – and why he is so determined to plead guilty. As the case makes its way through the Regency justice system, exercising the finest legal minds of their generation and dividing London society into the banker’s supporters and detractors, Plank races against time to find the answers that can save Fauntleroy’s life.