R L Graynger was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1949, and first resided in the Lenzie/Kirkintilloch area to the north east of the city. He spent all his early years in that area before leaving to join HM forces as what was then called a boy soldier. His first posting was to Junior Leaders Regiment Royal Armoured Corps based at the home of the RAC at Bovington Camp in Dorset. Leaving there after two years of intense training he opted for the 4th Royal Tank Regiment and saw service in most foreign postings, the more memorable being Hereford and Bergen/Belson in Germany; he also toured in Northern Ireland. After leaving the Army in the seventies he settled once again in the Glasgow area, working at anything that he could put his hand to, initially as a bricklayer's labourer and driving Caterpillar shovels. He then went to Glasgow College of Technology which is now the Caledonian University and studied business management before working for Glasgow District Council's parks department and then the Housing Department at management level until the end of the 1980s, when he was made redundant. Since then he has worked for the NHS and driven taxis until he had some medical problems and had to give up work for a few years before finally getting the go-ahead to return to employment. Now in his fifties and out of work, he secured a placement on a training course through his local job centre on which he would learn new skills. At that time he never dreamed of becoming an author, but during this course he found it hard to type, so he enrolled at a college on a typing course and by chance purchased an old computer and as things turned out this was the start of the road to becoming an author. R L Graynger the author was now born, although he didn't know it at the time. He initially put fingers to the keyboard to create factual stories about himself and his family whilst learning the art of typing. In his spare time he progressed into researching crime as he believed that he could write maybe a short story or possibly a script for television or radio or something similar and he did this whilst still working in travel or banking in a call centre environment. He then wrote a crime novel relating to the drug scene more by surprise than anything else, mixing fact with fiction. The Rocket Man was penned thinking that this was the one and only novel, and to his surprise he found that he could write more on the subject and another three novels sprang out of this first idea. The author's novels are well researched and portray several sides of both the crime and justice side of a lucrative business such as drugs. Research was carried out in Spain, France and in the UK including interviews with police and customs officers, and elements of the criminal world. On the crime side of the business it shows how drug dealing is operated at this level, starting from the gear is purchased in North Africa and Europe, transported through Spain and France to be delivered into the UK distribution points before going onto the streets. On the justice side it portrays how customs and the police can unite to combat crime and gives an insight into how they go about their business of stopping the operation of the drug dealers from the time and that the dealers purchase the narcotics until they deliver them to the city-based contacts to disperse them. All these facts combined with good storylines that involve everything related to life and the drug business, including murder, revenge, double-crossing, love, romance, vicious hatred, gangland killings, trust, loyalty and deception, mean that these novels have everything and are action-packed and well put together. It is important that the novels are read in the sequence that they were penned: The Rocket Man, The Huntress, The Spreader and Home Run. R L Graynger is one of Scotland's newest crime writers and is clearly very talented as he manages to mix all the ingredients that make good novels. He is at present writing a fifth book in the Rocket Man series, which is called Aftershock and if on time should be out for late 2005.