M R Hall Books

Description /Buy link takes you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.

M.R Hall, also known as Matthew Hall is an English novellist and also a screenwriter. Hall’s writing, both his novels and his screenplays tend to focus on criminality and law, with many of his writing credits being international hits such as Dalziel and Pascoe, Foyle’s War and Kavanagh QC. Hall’s crime fiction novels revolve around the character of Jenny Cooper, and he has achieved both critical and commercial success with this series of books.

Matthew Hall was born on May 1st in 1967 in the English captial city of London. His father, Ian Rex Hall, was a classical musician who had played for the Philharmonic Orchestra, while his mother was the writer Rebecca Hugh-Hall. So it’s safe to saw that coming from such a successful family, Matthew Hall was always destined to be success in his chosen field. That chosen field, at first, was to be the field of law, as he read law at Worcester College in Oxford. Upon graduation, Hall took up a career in the field of criminal law. At the same time, he also began to pursue his love of screen writing, and was able to combine his writing and his knowledge of law to great effect, eventually being commissioned to write an episode of Kavanagh QC for ITV. The series Kavanagh QC focused on law, as the title would suggest, and it led to Hall establishing himself as a fullt-eim writer by the mid-’90s.

With his success writing screenplays, Hall turned his attention to writing his own series, which was Wing and a Prayer. He managed to get two seasons out of it, with both series airing on Channel Five, which was in its infancy at the time. Wing and a Prayer also earned Hall a nomination in the Best TV Series category, although it lost out. Hall also continued writing for other television programmes, being commissioned for such hits as Dalziel and Pascoe, Holby City, Foyle’s War, and Loving You. He again created his own programme, this time for the BBC, which was New Street Law, which he co-created with GF Newman, who went on to become his partner in the production company One Eyed Dog.

As well as being a successful screenwriter, Hall turned his hand to writing novels in 2009. He has created a series of novels based around the character of Jenny Cooper. Jenny Cooper is a coroner, and she also investigates and solves cases away from the coroner’s office. Matthew Hall draws upon his experience in the courts as a criminal barrister to help create the fictional world that that character of Jenny Cooper resides in.

The first book in the Jenny Cooper series was published in 2009, which was The Coroner. It introduces the reader to the character of Jenny Cooper, and her position as the Severn Vale District Coroner. Hall then followed The Coroner up with the second book in the Jenny Cooper series, The Disappeared, which was published in 2010. This was followed by The Redeemed, and The Flight.

Hall then wrote the short story The Innocent in 2012, which acts as a prequel to the first book in the series, The Coroner. He introduces Cooper’s former life as a family lawyer, before she turned her attention to being a coroner. While it isn’t necessary to read The Innocent first, it does act as a good introduction to the character and some of her motives for the way she acts in the full-length books in the series.

After The Innocent, the fifth full-length book in the Jenny Cooper series was written by Hall, and it was released in 2013, called The Chosen Dead. The Burning followed that in 2014, and then The Last Port in 2016.

Matthew Hall has twice been nominated for the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger, first in 2009 for The Coroner, which he lost out on to William Brodrick’s A Whispered Name, and then again in 2012 for The Flight, which he this time lost out to Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage.

Author Matthew Hall was born May 1, 1967 in London, England, and is both a screenwriter and a novelist. He went to Hereford Cathedral School and graduated from Worcester College, Oxford with a degree in law. He started practicing law in the year 1990 before becoming a full time writer in the year 1995. He is the son of Ian Hall (who used to be a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) and Rebecca Hughes-Hall. With his wife, Patricia Carswell (who works as a freelance journalist), he has two sons.

Hall writes the “Jenny Cooper” series. He wrote some episodes of “Kavanagh QC” and later created and wrote for “Wing and A Prayer” (which is a legal series). He has also written for other television series, and wrote a television film that was produced in 2003 called “Loving You”. He also wrote and created “Keeping Faith” (which was an eight part series) that was produced in the year 2017.

M.R. HALL AWARDS

“The Coroner” made the shortlist for Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger award for the best crime novel of the year 2009. He was shortlisted for the same award in the year 2012 for the novel “The Flight”. His series “Wing and A Prayer” was nominated for a BAFTA award in the best television series category in the year 1997.

BEST M.R. HALL BOOKS

For those readers looking to get into novels by M.R. Hall, this section will help with that. It will go over the novels “The Coroner”, “The Disappeared”, and “The Redeemed”.

The Coroner: This is the first novel in the “Jenny Cooper” series and was released in the year 2009. Jenny Cooper, a lawyer, is made the Severn Vale District Coroner. All she wants is quiet and peace to get over her horrible divorce. That is going to be hard seeing as how she has inherited an office from Harry Marshall that has neglected files that hides a lot of evidence and dark secrets.

Is a young boy dying while in custody linked to Marshall’s fate, and a teenage prostitute killing herself? It piques Jenny’s curiosity. Marshall was behaving in a strange way before he died. Why is that? What was he going to expose? And why did he change his mind all of a sudden?

Jenny goes on a hunt for justice against all kinds of strong and deadly forces. She has to do it by herself and it threatens her mental strength and her career.

The Disappeared: This is the second novel in the “Jenny Cooper” series and was released in the year 2009. Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan (two British students that are young) go missing. The police inform their parents that they had been surveilling the two boys; it was likely, the police say, that they left the country to go pursue their dangerous new ideals. Seven years go by and Nazim’s mother, stricken with grief, still does not believe it. Jenny Cooper is the last hope she has left.

Jenny finally gets settled in her Coroner role in Severn Valley; after she has gotten rid of the parts of her past that were going to ruin her once again. The inquest into Nazim’s disappearance gets started and conspiracy and corruption are obvious.

Pressure from above gets strong and there is a code of silence issued on the inquest. Everything goes out of control and Jenny is pushed to the point of breaking. She did not know that she would be unraveling her own past when she was trying to figure out what happened to someone that went missing.

The Redeemed: This is the third novel in the “Jenny Cooper” series and was released in the year 2011. A dead man is found in an overgrown cemetery in Bristol and has the signs of the cross indented into his skin.

It would appear, at least to Jenny, that it was a routine (if not horrific) suicide. Father Lucas Starr (a young priest that proves to be an enigma) shows up to convince Jenny that she needs to look into Eva Donaldson. She was a political campaigner with a high profiler with a past that haunted her. Paul Craven, who is a young man, has been sentenced for her death. Father Lucas believes Paul is innocent, despite the evidence and his conviction in the case.

Once again, she goes on a lonesome quest for justice against the establishment that wants her silent. She still has ghosts she needs to confront. She answers to nobody but the dead.

M.R Hall FAQs

Q: What nationality is the author M.R Hall?

A: The author M.R Hall is English, having been born in the city of London, and now lives in south Wales.

Q: What series of books has M.R Hall written?

A: While having achieved success as a screenwriter, M.R Hall decided to turn to crime fiction novel writing, and he has created the Jenny Cooper series of books, based around a coroner.

When Does The Next M.R. Hall book come out?

M.R. Hall doesn't seem to have an upcoming book. Their newest book is The Black Art of Killing and was released on April, 2nd 2020.

Home » Author » M R Hall

BookSeries.org