An Exmouth author has spoken of owing a ‘huge debt to lockdown’ as he releases two books in the same week.

Katastophe is Graham Hurley’s seventh book in the Spoils of War series which takes a new look at World War Two while Lights Down is part of a series featuring Anglo-Breton actress Enora Andressen.

So far, Graham has published 42 books but never have two appeared in the same week. He puts a lot of this down to the Covid-19 lockdown.

He said: “I owe a huge debt to lockdown.

“There were literally months of peace and quiet with little else to do but write another book.”

He currently has two series on the go. Katastrophe is the seventh novel in the Spoils of War series and takes place in the glowing embers of Berlin as the Russians close on the capital of the Third Reich, and the anti-Nazi alliance begins to self-destruct.

The Spoils of War series was born out of Graham’s fascination with conflict.

“For sixteen years I wrote crime fiction but then it occurred to me that World War Two was the biggest crime scene of them all and thankfully my publisher agreed,” said Graham.

“And so, I’ve come up with a series of fictional and historical characters that come and go through the series as the various narratives demand.

“I’ve called it ‘soft-linkage’, and it’s fairly bold as a concept, but so far it seems to be working.

“What fascinates me is the challenge of reducing huge historical events to moments of intense crisis in lives on the page.

“Put those lives together, and you have plot. And with plot – with the right characters – you have a readership.”

Lights Down, Graham’s other Covid-19 novel, is a very different book with Enora Andressen falling into ‘very bad company’.

Graham added: “It’s a contemporary series, and to date she’s had to deal with kidnap, attempted murder and drug dealing on an industrial scale.

“The third book in the series, Off-Script, happens to take place in Exmouth and some of our neighbours are horrified.”

Graham is appearing at events in Budleigh Library, Kennaway House in Sidmouth and at the Budleigh Literary Festival in September to shed more light on both books.