One Door Shuts

Tony Horne, our True Crime specialist, reflects on how he got started in the business…and encourages you to do the same. You never know where it might lead.

One Door Shuts, Another Door Opens…

‘During an investigation, my superiors liken it to walking down a corridor, slamming doors behind them,’ my late friend Police Constable David Rathband told me in 2010.

He was referring specifically to his own story – gunned down, blinded and left for dead in the UK’s biggest police manhunt for 40 years and the unravelling of the lies told by the accomplices of his assassin Raoul Moat.

I like that imagery a lot.

Its irony is not lost on me.

As I write, we have just passed the 15th anniversary of my friend being slain. He was to take his own life just months after our book Tango 190 (his police callsign) was released. Fast forward to July 2025 and I have completed filming for a documentary on Prime this September with his twin Darren, who has been flown over from Adelaide in South Australia, as we both relived the moment on which several lives changed forever – mine amongst them.

This is the point: with my friend’s blessing, this book, this life, this tragedy has opened every door for me.

One at a time.

And each door leads to the next. That is how this business works.

From the moment of release, I received dozens of disgruntled police officers trying to send me confidential information. I vowed never to do another cop book!

In fact, I had only planned on doing one book on anything. I was drawn to this story rather than a career as an author or ghostwriter.

That did not last long because it is my genre – it is what I do.

I am now a True Crime specialist but at the time I was a morning radio host.

David intimated to me that crooks and police thought the same way. They just were coming at it from a different side of the law. That stayed with me. It is in my genes to go digging, to work out what is missing, to try to help unravel miscarriages of justice and offer a voice to Davids (literally in this case) over Goliaths.

What followed for me has been an extraordinary experience. I can’t think of an element in crime about which I haven’t written, and it all started with this tragedy.

You may well be at the beginning of your own process. When people ask me at that stage what advice I can give them, I simply say one thing:

“Start”.

You have absolutely no idea where this will take you and in the routine of life, that is a blessing. For me, that has meant a podcast heard in 70 countries, about three requests a year for the last decade to make a TV show and at least two plays of which I am aware.

I just wanted to write my friend’s book.

Now, every day is a new adventure. A new client is a new story.

From my point of view, as well as empowering lifestyle choices like work from home, this is the excitement. I do also respect the duty of care that David’s story embedded in me.

For you, your book can be a legacy project to your family and the next generation. It might be that tool which starts your personal brand. Perhaps, you have eyes on the speaking circuit or want to be a regularly booked expert on talk shows.

Most likely, you just want to go on the record and write an account that few can challenge because it is your life and your story – and yes, everybody does have a story.

Do you know the most beautiful aspect of publishing your life, your ethos, your knowledge in your own words? It is when you see someone by a pool reading a book you wrote, or you overhear a conversation about it, or you get data that it is selling in a place you can’t even pronounce.

That is the beauty – dancing with the unknown – and then looking back years later and figuring out how you ended up here as though you had been gifted this opportunity. The idea of seeing your name on a front cover might have always been on your to-do list but it is going to give you such more than a moment, as my own journey shows.

In a spontaneous, disposable world where we have never met many of our ‘friends’, your book is a chance to form genuine relationships and create something of lasting value.

Whatever you do, please though, don’t leave it unwritten.

And watch those doors fly open.