When Mike Craven despatched the draft of his novel The Botanist to a scientist good friend, the response wasn’t fairly what he had anticipated.

“He got straight back and told me I could face ten years in prison for revealing the recipe for ricin,” explains the Carlisle-born novelist with a wry smile. “Even searching for it on the internet is an offence under terrorism legislation, and I’d inadvertently included details of how to make it!”

The lethal toxin, derived from castor beans, performs an vital half in Craven’s ebook, which received the distinguished Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award earlier this week on the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

“The security services apparently are playing whack-a-mole when recipes crop up online. As soon as they’re up there, they take them down. And then another one crops up. And I just happened to come across one by chance,” he continues.

“It’s such a simple thing to make, you can buy everything you need off Amazon for about £200. But I didn’t know it was illegal so I just wrote it down because I thought it was interesting.

“My friend, Brian Price, who’s also an author, told me someone was going to go to prison under the Terrorism Act if we published it. If you’ve watched Breaking Bad, when they include the recipe for Methamphetamine crystal meth] they miss out some key processes, so you can’t watch the TV show and then make it. So I did the same. And I think I owe Brian a drink.”

The lethal poison is likely one of the instruments utilized by Mike’s baddie, the so-called “Botanist” of the title, as they take out unpopular movie star targets, to the delight of some.

The writer, who writes below the identify M W Craven, jokes at present that his ebook, the fifth in his bestselling Washington Poe sequence which options the UK’s model of the FBI, is his most “woke” as a result of the victims are such an unlikeable bunch.

They embody corrupt politicians, hate-mongering social media influencers and a medicine baron who has purchased a prescription drugs then jacked up the worth (based mostly on US hedge fund millionaire, Martin Shkreli, who confronted a backlash after shopping for the manufacturing licence for the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim and elevating its value by a staggering 5,455 per cent).

“Reviews have branded it a woke book. Though, incredibly, a few people have been siding with the victims,” he laughs.

“And I’m trying to think of which particular victim? Is it the woman who is keeping modern slaves, or the racist or the misogynist, or the corrupt MP… or all of those?”

Indeed, his outspoken DS, Poe, finds the victims deeply unpalatable whilst he’s making an attempt to avoid wasting their lives. Mike provides that the ebook relies on a sequence of so-called “locked room” mysteries, impressed by his pleasant rivalry with Anglo-Asian novelist Abir Mukherjee.

Having been a daily on the Harrogate Festival, maybe the world’s most well-known celebration of crime writing, now in its twentieth yr, since 2011, Mike is delighted to have been chosen by judges for its prime award, supported by the Daily and Sunday Express.

Simon Theakston of title sponsor Theakston Brewery introduced the 55-year-old writer with a hand-made beer barrel and a cheque for £3,000 on the ceremony on Thursday night. Elly Griffiths was awarded a highly-commended for ther ebook, The Locked Room.

“I’ve been coming here as a reader, as a soon-to-be-published author and now as an award winner, so I feel like I’ve come full circle, it’s a real honour,” Mike explains. “My editor was buying champagne but I don’t like it, it just tastes like fizzy cider to me.”

Mike has loved a storied life. Growing up in Newcastle, the son of a cigarette salesman and a nurse, he joined the Army on a whim, spending 12 years within the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, earlier than learning social work at college.

From there, he joined the Probation Service and labored his solution to the highest in Cumbria the place he ultimately took redundancy as chief probation officer when the service was privatised. But it was a brush with dying from a uncommon most cancers 20 years in the past on the age of 35 that modified his life and set him on the street to being a author.

His Lake District-set sequence, that includes Poe and civilian crime analyst Tilly Bradshaw, who enjoys a genius-level IQ however lacks social consciousness, set him on the trail to success in 2018 with The Puppet Show.

The pair are unlikely allies who develop into agency buddies in a recent tackle the basic police procedural. Mike’s newest ebook, Fearless, is an American-set standalone starring former US Marshal Ben Koenig, however he goals to return to the sequence subsequent yr together with his “darkest book yet”, The Mercy Chair.

He tries to range his books – citing US crime legend and former Harrogate particular visitor Michael Connelly as inspiration – so The Botanist was lighter in tone forward of its forthcoming darker sequel.

“I hold Mike Connelly as the gold standard, whatever he writes, it’s different in tone to his previous book,” he says. “So because I knew the plot of The Mercy Chair was going to be incredibly dark – my agent couldn’t read it in one, he had to take a break from it – so I made The Botanist a lot lighter than I had originally intended.”

Mike provides that he enjoys the humour of earlier Crime Novel of the Year winner Mick Herron’s Slough House books, tailored into an Apple+ TV sequence starring Gary Oldman. While he’s reluctant to disclose spoilers for the subsequent ebook, Mike does admit to refusing to kill off Poe’s love curiosity, pathologist Estelle Doyle, as a result of he didn’t need his character to be too depressing. “Poe deserves to be happy for a while, so she’s not gonna die anytime soon,” he smiles.

There may even be a second Koenig ebook subsequent yr and Mike is at the moment concerned in bringing Fearless to the small display screen.

The rights to the Poe sequence have additionally been optioned for tv set towards the beautiful backdrop of the Lake District.

Mike believes the rise in individuals holidaying within the UK because of the pandemic and newer cost-of-living disaster means individuals really feel a connection to the Lakes.

“Britons feel like collectively we own the Lake District because almost everyone has been. It’s a big national park, there’s beautiful scenery, and there are nice restaurants. It’s everything you want for a holiday,” he says. “That’s part of the success of the books, but also there’s a literary history with people like Beatrix Potter and Wordsworth. I set the first one, The Puppet Show, in the Lakes with the intention of moving around the country because Poe and Tilly work for The National Crime Agency’s serious crime analysis section, but my book contract was for a procedural series set in Cumbria.

“So now for every book, I’ve got to invent a reason for them to come back to Cumbria.”

Mike pays tribute to his spouse Jo, who reads all his books early, and warns him if he’s gone excessive with any of his murders.

“Ideally I was to write 20 Poe novels and in 10 year’s time get a lifetime achievement award because I enjoyed writing these. It’s fun. I can go quite dark in my books, because I can always shock people out of the darkness with something sarcastic.

“The humour is a device for me. But it’s lovely to be writing the sort of books I like to read.”

• The Botanist by M W Craven (Constable, £9.99) is revealed and received the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023. Visit expressbookshop.com or name 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25.