United Kingdom and British Commonwealth only: Represented in these territories on behalf of  Jabberwocky Literary Agency.

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. Three sequels followed, THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CLOCKWORK MAN, EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON and THE SECRET OF ABDU EL YEZDI. In addition, Del Rey UK have published Mark’s science fiction novel, A RED SUN ALSO RISES.

Mark’s blog can be found here.

He also runs BLAKIANA, a site dedicated to the fictional British detective, Sexton Blake.

Agent Contact: John Berlyne