Life on Mars Novels[]
In March 2012, Harper Collins made a deal with Kudos Film and Television to publish a series of novels based on Life On Mars. Written by Tom Graham, the four resulting novels take place after events in Life On Mars and before Ashes to Ashes. The books were published exclusively as e-books at roughly three-month intervals, but were successful enough to generate the release of hard-copy editions in August 2013. The titles derive from the culture of early 1970s Britain.
Life on Mars 1: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos []
(HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0007472574)
Time to leap into the Cortina as Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt roar back into action in a brand new installment of Life on Mars.
‘If you think I’m gonna stand here listening to yet more of your Mary, Mungo and Midge about waiting for back-up, you’re even dopier than the front of your head suggests, Tyler. I’m going right up them stairs to nail me a villain – and that, Sammy-boy, is called law enforcement!’
When detective Sam Tyler was catapulted into the alien world of 1973, he found a world where men swigged scotch before breakfast. But when Sam finally got home, he realised he’d left his heart back in the seventies amongst the fly-wing collars and pints of Skol. He missed Annie Cartwright, the woman he had fallen in love with, and perhaps – just perhaps – he even missed The Guv, that nicotine-stained, sexist, homophobic caveman who was his DCI.
Now Sam is back in ’73 for good, but is this the greatest mistake he’s ever made? As Sam deals with what appears to be an IRA bombing campaign, and clashes with the irrepressible Gene Hunt, the creepy little girl from the TV test card keeps warning him, “you should never have come back here, Sam … you’ll see … you’ll see…”
Life on Mars 2: A Fistful of Knuckles[]
(HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0007472581)
Time to leap into the Cortina as Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt roar back into action in a brand new installment of Life on Mars.
DCI Gene Hunt plunges into the boxing underworld – and this time, the gloves are coming off!
The travelling fair has rolled into town, but it has brought with it more than just dodgem cars and candy floss. A young boxer is found brutally murdered, and as Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt delve deeper into the case, it leads them behind the gaudy lights and painted caravans of the fairground, into the shadowy underbelly of bare-knuckle gypsy brawlers and bloody illegal fights.
But Sam is coping with more than just police work. He is still being plagued by The Test Card Girl with horrifying visions of the terrible doom that awaits he and Annie. What is this monstrous presence that is pursuing them both? Can Sam find a way of defeating this remorseless evil – or are their fates sealed?
Violence, murder, betrayal and revenge. Could this be a case so macho that it will see even the mighty Guv himself on the ropes?
Life on Mars 3: Borstal Slags[]
(HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0007472598)
Time to leap into the Cortina as Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt roar back into action in a brand new installment of Life on Mars.
‘Smell that borstal whiff, Tyler. The heady aroma of body odour, spunk, and bunged up khazis. And that’s just the staff who work here.’
It’s time to get tooled up as DI Sam Tyler and DCI Gene Hunt find themselves pursuing justice on the wrong side of the prison walls in this third exciting installment of Life on Mars.
A grisly death, a mysterious letter, and a runaway truck on the rampage – what is it that connects them, and why does it point towards the brutal regime at Friar's Brook borstal? Is Head Warder McClintock taking his obsession with control and punishment to murderous extremes? Or are there even darker forces at work amid the young criminal minds incarcerated behind those high walls?
For Sam, Friar’s Brook will be far more than just a police investigation. What he encounters there will tear his world apart.
Trivia[]
"Slag" is a British insult term for a woman, something like "slut" for Americans. Borstals were the "homes for wayward boys", the precursors of modern youth detention centres, but far less regulated, inside and out.
Life on Mars 4: Get Cartwright[]
(HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0007472604)
Time to leap into the Cortina as Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt roar back into action in a brand new installment of Life on Mars.
‘Women in the Force?! It’s against nature! Just look what happened here when they let Cartwright in. Like bloody Yoko, she’s been.’
The team at CID is falling apart. Internal conflicts are stretching loyalties, wrecking friendships and turning A-Division against itself. And somehow, with their department splitting like Rod Stewart’s tightest trousers, DCI Gene Hunt and DI Sam Tyler must deal with a case that is leaving dead coppers all over the city, threatening to destroy the mighty Guv’nor himself, and sees Annie Cartwright pursued by a killer who will let nothing stop him – not even death.
Author Tom Graham[]
According to the book jackets, “Tom Graham left school at 14 without qualifications. He is a smoker, and says that writing the Life on Mars novels is the nearest thing he’s had to a regular job since he got banned from driving. He part-owns a greyhound called Arthur and his ambition is to get fruity with Raquel Welch (to be clear about it, that’s Tom’s ambition, not Arthur’s).”