Celebrating writing excellence in the South-West
Victoria is a crime writer and author of the Smart Woman's mystery series, a modern take on the classic murder mysery with lots of dark humour. The first novel in the series, The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder, is short listed for the People's Book Prize and was also Classic Mystery's Book of the Year alongside Robert Thorogood (creator of Death in Paradise). The second book in the series, Body on the Island came out in February 2021 going straight into the top 100 best sellers and 5th best selling book in British Detective Fiction.
Victoria is also an award-winning short story writer, having won the Gothic Fiction prize for short fiction 2019. She was runner up in The New Writer's writer of the year award and her work has been short-listed and Highly commended by Writers' Forum. She was long-listed for The Willesden Herald International Short Story Competition and has had short stories published in various literary journals and magazines, such as Aesthetica: A Review of Contemporary Artists; Dream Catcher; Gold Dust; and BTSL Literary and Arts Journal.
Victoria also writes the non-fiction series Adapting Agatha about adaptations of Agatha Christie novels and speaks at various literary festivals on this. You can find the series here on her website Victoria Dowd
She is originally from Yorkshire and, after studying Law at Cambridge University, was a criminal law barrister for many years before becoming a full-time writer.