James Egan is a worried man. The insurance broker has got in with the wrong crowd – a gang of criminals which has embroiled him in a major fraud. And now he’s escaped with the money to the Costa Brava with a contract on his head.

Enter the fictional world of 81-year-old Corbridge writer, Peter Jemison, a novelist who took to writing later in life after a varied career which included metallurgy and insurance.

Peter’s third novel, The Causio Contracts, is a hard-edged thriller with the main protagonist in fear for his life. He’s taken a wrong turn, but while on the run in Spain he finds love. Is there a chance to redeem himself? Does the story have a happy ending? You’ll have to read Peter’s book to find out.

The idea for the story came from the fact that Peter had been an insurance broker himself.

“I saw how with charm and friendliness an insurance broker could become very important to the company or institution they were dealing with and from that platform, it could be really easy to take advantage of the client and swindle them,” he said.

Writing was something Peter, born in Prudhoe, had always wanted to do.

But after graduating from Durham University with a degree in metallurgy, he went on to work for the Consett Iron Company, before moving into management at a foundry in Batley, West Yorkshire.

“I became technical director during that time,” he said.

“But there was a decline in the industry so the long and short of it was, the managing director and myself were ousted.

“So I decided to switch professions and ran my own insurance brokerage for about ten years in Leeds and then sold it because my wife and I had to return to the North-East because both our mothers were dying.”

That lifelong ambition to write stayed with him though – Peter describes it as an addiction – and he fulfilled his dream when he had his first novel, The Unspeakables, which tells the story of illegal fox hunting, published in 2010.

“I was still wondering whether I was deluding myself. However, the reaction to The Unspeakables was exceptionally good,” he said.

It was followed up by Castle Douglas, a tale of murder and betrayal, beginning in the early part of the Second World War and running up to the present day. The narrative concerns an individual who has died and the novel opens with his death.

It takes Peter between a year to 18 months to turn his ideas into a fully-fledged book and his fans wuill be pleased to know that he is already writing his fourth – another crime thriller.

“I think the sort of reactions I have received have given me confidence in my writing,” he said.

The Causio Contracts by Peter F. Jemison is available from Cogito Books in Hexham and online at Amazon.