Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children's book - Ayesha and the Firefish , was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. The Waiter ( Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures. The Cook ( Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series - The Detective ( Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) - is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing) , the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.