Since he embarked on his career as a writer, Howard Linskey has had quite a few ‘wow moments’. Getting a two-book deal with No Exit on the back of his book The Drop was rather exciting. Making The Times' Top 5 crime thriller list was pretty good too. And being approached by the producer, David Barron, of the Harry Potter films about the possibility of making that book into a TV series.... that was, well, a big wow.

“I thought it was a spoof when I got the letter from David,“ laughs Howard, who lives in Welwyn Garden City. “He read about the book in The Times and bought a copy, and wanted to do something with it for TV.“

Howard signed a contract with Barron’s production company Runaway Fridge last year and the company is now in talks with TV companies.

Howard has used the time since then to publicise his second novel, The Damage, and to write and release his third, The Dead, which came out last week.

All three novels feature white collar gangster David Blake, who ‘runs’ Newcastle. The Drop was chosen by The Times as one of its Top 5 crime thrillers of 2011 and the US rights for the first two books have been bought by HarperCollins.

“David Blake is a reluctant gangster,“ explains Howard, 45, a former journalist on a local newspaper in Cheshire, “he started out thinking he wasn’t one but you can’t be part of that world and be exempt from it, and he ends up being head of a firm in Newcastle. Once I got him from one end of The Drop to the other, I had so many ideas coming that I knew I had another book here at least – well, it turned out to be three. It just mushroomed.“

In The Dead, we see David Blake battling his conscience as his bent accountant is arrested for the murder of a young girl and blackmails Blake into getting him off – even though Blake knows he is guilty.

At the same time, Blake has been blamed for the death of a police officer’s daughter and has the entire force bearing down on him as he fights to clear his name.

And then there are the small matters of Serbian gangsters taking over his territory and a crazed Russian oligarch wanting to use Blake’s drug supply line for his own ends.

“If you like stories with half a dozen plot lines going on at once, then this is for you,“ laughs Howard, who moved to Harpenden from his native County Durham 11 years ago, before settling in Welwyn.

“I didn’t consciously choose crime, I got an idea for a character and it just happened to be a crime story,“ Howard explains.

“I’ve always read the rather dry court reports in the papers, which just say ‘this person was convicted of that crime’, and wondered ‘What was that guy like? How did he get caught? What made him do it?’ They’ve always fascinated me. And then my imagination fills in the rest.“

Howard is already hard at work on his fourth novel, another crime thriller but this one is about a journalist who has to return to his home town to investigate the disappearance of a missing girl.

In the meantime, he’s keeping his fingers crossed about that TV deal. Howard laughs when he remembers his meeting with David Barron.

“We just had a chat, two ordinary guys, about what he wanted to do, and I went out and thought ‘Blimey, I’ve just had a meeting with the producer of the biggest movie franchise ever!’“

The treatment for the TV adaptation is being written by JJ Connolly, who wrote the novel Layer Cake and the screenplay of the film of it, starring Daniel Craig, Sienna Miller and Tom Hardy.

“I’m chuffed to bits about that,“ says Howard. “He and David are both massive names, so one of these TV companies has to bite!

“Sitting there watching TV and seeing ‘based on the novel by Howard Linskey’ – that would be my biggest wow.“