Paul Charles, the Northern Ireland man who looks after Tom Waits and writes detective novels

Paul Charles left Northern Ireland and became a music agent in London before starting out as an author

Paul Charles is proof that you can take the boy out of Northern Ireland, but you can't take Northern Ireland out of the boy.

He moved from Magherafelt to London as a 17-year-old and studied to be a civil engineer, though he was more interested in writing about the London music scene for Irish music papers than surveying, planning and drawing.

His real education began when he took on the multiple role of manager, lyricist, roadie, sound-engineer and agent for the Belfast band Fruupp.

Although Fruupp split up after four albums, by that point Paul had met Paul Fenn and they became firm friends and partners in the Asgard Agency where – over the last 30 years – Paul has been agent for a wide range of music acts including Crosby, Stills & Nash, Ray Davies, Lonnie Donegan, Christy Moore, Don McLean, Elvis Costello, John Lee Hooker, Rory Gallagher, Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, The Waterboys and The Undertones.

He has also programmed the acoustic stage at Glastonbury Festival for the last 25 years.

So how on earth did this same man become a writer of crime fiction?

He said: “I’ve loved crime stories and mysteries since I was a kid. It was my second love after music.

“In 1996, inspired by Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books, I attempted my first detective mystery.”

I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass was published the following year.

Nine further critically acclaimed DI Christy Kennedy titles followed including 2012’s A Pleasure To Do Death with You.

He said: “You try to come up with a perfect crime and then work back two or three steps and throw some flaws into it so that a detective and his team can solve it.

“There’s the famous instance where Arthur Conan Doyle – one of the great detective writers – was asked by the London Met to solve a real life murder and he was totally out of his depth.

“When it’s real life and real victims, you don’t control the vertical and horizontal. Life controls all that.”

Now 69, Paul has been living away from Northern Ireland for 42 years but he says he has never really left: “I get home quite a bit. My dad still lives in Magherafelt.

“Our extended family live in the village and the villages nearby.

“I don’t think we ever leave, do we?

“There’s a lot of stuff I grew up with that I have sorted into stories, sometimes subconsciously.

“People I knew in Northern Ireland give my ideas for characters.

“My life in London also features in a lot of the books, especially