Mark Hodder is descended from John Angell, a pirate who sailed with Captain Kidd. According to family legend, Angell invested most of his ill-gotten gains in land, particularly in Angell Town near Brixton in London. Anyone who can provide irrefutable legal evidence that they're descended from Angell will inherit the land, which is estimated to now be worth at least 64 million pounds. Over the course of generations, members of the family, seeking to gain the fortune, have lost one in trying to prove the link, and hordes of people who have no connection with the family at all have adopted the name in order to make a claim. As a result, the family tree is extremely tangled and a legal connection to the pirate's treasure is almost certainly impossible to establish.Mark's great-grandfather was Doctor Albert Leigh, who went to medical school with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The two men were great friends--they joined the Freemasons together--and Sir Arthur presented Albert with a complete set of Sherlock Holmes first editions, all inscribed: To dear Leigh, from your friend Doyle. They would fetch a fortune at auction today. Unfortunately, upon Leigh's death in 1944, his housekeeper, an actress, made off with the volumes and they've never been seen since.Thus it is that two great fortunes have eluded Mark Hodder.Denied money-for-nothing and the luxury, idleness, and indulgences it would bring, Mark lives in Spain and writes novels. His first Burton & Swinburne adventure--THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK--was published in 2010 and promptly won the Philip K. Dick Award. Sequels followed: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CLOCKWORK MAN, EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (nominated for the Sidewise Award 2013), THE SECRET OF ABDU EL YEZDI (nominated for the Sidewise Award 2014), and THE RETURN OF THE DISCONTINUED MAN. The final book in the series, THE RISE OF THE AUTOMATED ARISTOCRATS, is currently in preparation.In A RED SUN ALSO RISES, a non-Burton & Swinburne novel, Mark pays homage to his favourite childhood author, Edgar Rice Burroughs.As creator and proprietor of BLAKIAN, the Sexton Blake Resource, Mark is delighted to be the first author in nearly half a century to have written an official new Sexton Blake story. THE SILENT THUNDER CAPER tells of Blake's newest encounter with his old foes, The Three Musketeers.The adventures of Macallister Fogg are available on Kindle; currently: THE MASTER MUMMER'S MUMMY, GREAT GREAT GREAT (AND SO FORTH) UNCLE DRAGOSLAV, and THE HETERODYTHERMALINE HIGHWAYMAN.Mark has a short story--THE LOSS OF CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE--in the anthology ENCOUNTERS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and another--THE BLOOD OF OUR LAND--in ZENITH LIVES! He's also written for Polish and German anthologies.