Ex-reporter draws on real life crimes to pen book

A former crime reporter who covered some of Britain's most notorious cases has drawn on his courtroom experiences to pen a new book.

Michael Steward covered the disappearance in Bury St Edmunds of RAF gunner Corrie Mckeague and Jeremy Bamber's appeals against his conviction for the White House Farm murders which happened near Maldon in Essex.

Now, the former East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star journalist, 45, has channelled those years of reporting from crime scenes into creating a fiction series.

"The individual plots are invented, but the emotions aren't," he said.

Steward also reported on the disappearance of Victoria Hall in 1999, which was finally solved by detectives in 2026.

"I spent years speaking to police officers, detectives, victims' families, lawyers and people whose lives had been turned upside down by crime," he said.

"You see how complicated people are and how rarely situations fit neatly into the boxes we expect."

The novel, Kingsland, was published in July and follows a private investigator's efforts to solve the disappearance of an aspiring athlete in east London.

It is the second book in his series. The first, called Harvest, was released in 2022 and has been downloaded more than 2,800 times.

Steward said the plot was often inspired by the human stories he encountered as a local journalist.

"When writing about real investigations, particularly missing person cases, I was always acutely aware that there may not be a resolution," he continued.

"Advancements in DNA testing mean that we are seeing more results from cases of some age now.

"But, even so, I always felt very sad when speaking to family members who were resigned to the fact that they might never find out what happened to their loved one."

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