INTERNATIONAL best-selling Sussex crime author Peter James is, by anyone s standards, having a very successful 2021. The first of his famous Roy Grace novels aired as an ITV drama last month - with many more in the pipeline - and his next novel is just months away. On top of this, a tour of a Roy Grace stage play is set to start in June and the invented detective s ever-hectic schedule continues later this year when he will star in a novella as part of a government programme to encourage people into reading. But the 72-year-old s path to crime-writing royalty was not a straightforward one, and was instead forged by a series of chance encounters with Brighton law enforcement s finest.