A pop agent who represents Elvis Costello and Van Morrison is busy reshaping the detective novel genre, writes Kim Janssen

WHEN it comes to literary coppers, Britain has always been more Hampstead Village than Camden Town.
Think of English detective fiction and the images you’ll likely conjure are pastoral, belonging to a bygone age – Inspector Morse meandering down a country lane in his vintage Jag, Miss Marple quizzing the vicar in the library or Sherlock Holmes with his deerstalker and pipe tramping across the moors.
But author Paul Charles wants to change all that.
Sure, his creation DI Christy Kennedy prefers a nice cup of tea to a bottle of scotch in the drawer, but he operates in a highly recognisable bustle of rock musicians, drug-users and nightclubs in and around Camden Town.
Charles, an Irish 57-year-old pop agent who represents, among others, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Ray Davies and Van Morrison, knows the music scene as well as anyone.
And after 16 years living in Primrose Hill, he knows the area pretty well too.

Actress Emma Campbell-Jones tells Jane Wright what she fears most about the possibility of making it big

IS THERE no justice in the world? Not only is new actress Emma Campbell-Jones equipped with tumbling treacle-coloured curls, eyelashes to sweep the floor with and even a perfectly positioned Cindy Crawford mole, but she also packs that winning combination of talent, charm and determination which is sure to make her a star.
The 25-year-old from Harrington Square, Mornington Crescent, is already bagging auditions for the Hollywood director of The Shipping News and Cider House Rules, Lasse Hallstrom, as well as the long-running BBC TV hit Monarch of the Glen.