The Poetry of Patrick Mackeown Page 1

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Patrick G Whing-Mackeown was born in London in 1966. Adopted by Anglo-Irish parents, he grew up in Turkey, Wales and in several parts of England. He studied philosophy at one of the old polytechnics and graduated with a 2:1 in 1994. Having been variously a chef, salesman and computer operator, he was caught up soon after graduation in the Dot-Com bubble. Already having learned to program computers, he soon became useful and worked as a senior technician for what was, at the time, one of England's foremost Internet Service Providers, Demon Internet, where he was responsible for the operation of several commercial services. He left the ISP in early 2000 to join an internationally renowned news corporation, but soon became disillusioned by the petty nature of the UK organisation. While waiting for the heady days of the technical revolution to return, he implemented many computing projects there.

A short story writer, essay competition winner and a member of his local writer's group, he had always been keen on writing. Admiring a number of first time novelists, such as Frank Lean and Andrea Badenoch, as well as some early Ian Rankin, the pace, if not the style and content of James Patterson and the mastery of suspense of Michael Crichton, he decided to complete a novel of his own. Most liking the tenacity and authority of John Creasey, he chose the police procedural as his brand of commercial fiction. Determining to one day make a new career of writing, in place of programming, he decided to create the character of Inspector Hawthorne, around whom a series of novels would be based.