David Wishart
Encyclopedia
Life and work
Wishart was born in Arbroath, ScotlandScotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. He studied Greek and Latin classics at Edinburgh University and after graduation taught for four years in a secondary school. He then retrained as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and worked abroad for eleven years, in Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. He returned to Scotland in 1990 and now lives with his family in Carnoustie
Carnoustie
Carnoustie is a town and former police burgh in the council area of Angus, Scotland. It is situated at the mouth of the Barry Burn on the North Sea coast...
, mixing writing with teaching EFL and study skills
Study Skills
Study skills or study strategies are approaches applied to learning. They are generally critical to success in school, are considered essential for acquiring good grades, and are useful for learning throughout one's life....
at the University of Dundee
University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....
. He is married to Rona Wishart, librarian at St Leonards School in St. Andrews, and has two children. He does not play golf but spends a great deal of his non-writing time walking the dog. (Source: Publishers biog.)
Most of his novels share the same protagonist, Marcus Corvinus
Marcus Corvinus (fictional character)
Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus is a fictional character in a series of historical detective novels by the Scottish author David Wishart.Corvinus is of a noble Roman family, living in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius...
. Spurning the conventional career path of a military posting via a civil service post to an elected post and the Senate, Wishart's hero develops a taste for investigating crimes of a particularly sensitive nature, thereby allowing the author to introduce numerous historical figures and to continue to mine a rich seam of Imperial Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
intrigue. Plots are typically complex, and give us a fair taste of the treacherous nature of Roman politics in the immediate post-Republican era. Wishart's signature is his mix of accurate historical detail and racy modern dialogue; Corvinus talks, very entertainingly, like a Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
hero. He is also developing an interesting personality and a social conscience somewhat at odds with his high birth.
Marcus Corvinus series
- Ovid (1995)
- Germanicus (1997)
- Sejanus (1998)
- The Lydian Baker (1998)
- Old Bones (2000)
- Last Rites (2001)
- White Murder (2002)
- A Vote for Murder (2003)
- Parthian Shot (2004)
- Food for the Fishes (2005)
- In at the Death (2007)
- Illegally Dead (2008)
- Bodies Politic (2010)